Written and reviewed by Josh Kohanim, Esq., California Bar No. 328609 · Reviewed
What is different in Glendale
We represent people struck while walking in Glendale, and the adult children handling a parent's claim. Crashes between vehicles and injuries on private property start at our Glendale personal injury lawyer page.
Where older pedestrians are hit in Glendale
| Category | Killed and injured | Rank |
|---|---|---|
| Pedestrians 65 and older | 22 | 2 of 62 |
| Pedestrians, all ages | 72 | 14 of 62 |
| Total fatal and injury | 593 | 53 of 62 |
| Alcohol involved | 28 | 62 of 62 |
| Composite | 208 | 60 of 62 |
Rank 1 is the worst rate in the group and rank 62 is the lowest. The table says two different things. Glendale is one of the safer cities in its group on almost every measure, adjusted for 191,706 residents and 1,550,420 daily vehicle miles. Then it is second worst in the state for older people on foot. Glendale has a walking population and a downtown grid, and the crossings on Brand Boulevard, Central Avenue and Glenoaks Boulevard are where the two meet.
One caveat comes from the Office of Traffic Safety: "if a crash report is taken by the CHP on a road with shared jurisdiction, it does not count against the city." Three freeways meet in or beside Glendale, and the 134 alone carries more than 210,000 vehicles a day past Brand Boulevard, so the freeway collisions are not in the 593.
What the driver owed you
| Section | What it requires | Where it bites here |
|---|---|---|
| Veh. Code 21950(a) | Yield to a pedestrian in any marked or unmarked crosswalk at an intersection | Downtown crossings off Brand and Central |
| Veh. Code 21950(c) | Approaching a pedestrian in a crosswalk, use all due care and reduce speed | A driver who saw an older person and kept his speed |
| Veh. Code 21453(b) | Turning right on red, yield to pedestrians lawfully in an adjacent crosswalk | A right turn made without looking left |
| Veh. Code 21952 | Yield to a pedestrian on the sidewalk before driving across it | Garage exits at the Americana and the Galleria |
The sources: section 21950, 21453 and 21952. An unmarked crosswalk is the unpainted continuation of the sidewalk across the road at an intersection, and it carries the same right of way as a painted one. Breaking one of these sections gives a jury negligence per se, the presumption that arises when a safety statute is violated and causes the harm it was written to prevent, delivered as CACI 418, with the crosswalk duty itself as CACI 710. Our Los Angeles pedestrian accident lawyer page covers each statute in full.
If you were crossing away from an intersection, the claim is not over. Vehicle Code 21954(b) states that a pedestrian's duty to yield outside a crosswalk "shall not relieve the driver of a vehicle from the duty to exercise due care for the safety of any pedestrian upon a roadway." California divides fault by percentage, so a share assigned to you reduces the recovery instead of ending it.
Where you are treated after being hit
Glendale has three general acute care hospitals: Adventist Health Glendale, 1509 Wilson Terrace, 415 licensed beds; Glendale Memorial Hospital and Health Center, 1420 S Central Avenue, 255 beds; and USC Verdugo Hills Hospital, 1812 Verdugo Boulevard, 110 beds. None of the three is a designated trauma center. The California EMS Authority list updated October 22, 2025 has no Glendale hospital on it.
So a pedestrian with a serious head or torso injury leaves the city. The nearest designated centers are Huntington Hospital in Pasadena, Level II, at 100 W California Boulevard; Los Angeles General Medical Center, Level I adult, at 2051 Marengo Street; and Cedars-Sinai, Level I adult and pediatric, at 8700 Beverly Boulevard. That split shows up in the file as two hospital charts, two billing departments and two sets of liens, the rights to be repaid out of your settlement. It also gives a defense lawyer a gap to argue about, which is why the ambulance run sheet matters more in a Glendale case than in a Pasadena one.
Who wrote your crash report
A crash on a Glendale street is a Glendale Police Department report. Freeway crashes belong to the California Highway Patrol, and this is where Glendale causes confusion. The CHP Southern Division headquarters sits at 411 N Central Avenue in Glendale, and its own page says the division is an administrative office that is not open to the general public and that report requests must be made at an Area office instead.
We do not state which Area office patrols the 134, the 2 and the 5 through Glendale without confirming it, and it is not on the pages we checked. If your crash was on a freeway, we identify the correct Area and request the report from it. The building on Central Avenue does not issue copies.
Your deadline and where you file
Glendale is in the North Central District, and the Los Angeles Superior Court filing locator returns four possible courthouses for an unlimited civil case from a Glendale address: Burbank, Glendale, Pasadena or Alhambra. The district's own courthouses are the Glendale Courthouse, 600 East Broadway, and the Burbank Courthouse, 300 East Olive Avenue. A limited civil case, meaning $35,000 or less, goes to the Stanley Mosk Courthouse downtown. Local Rule 2.3 ties the assignment to the district where the incident arose, so the crossing where you were hit decides the building.
Every other California injury deadline sits in one table, in our post on California personal injury deadlines.
When the crosswalk rules do not apply
- It happened inside a parking structure. The Americana and the Galleria draw regional traffic into garages, and the Vehicle Code sections above speak to conduct on a highway or across a sidewalk. Inside private property the claim runs on the ordinary duty of care in Civil Code 1714, plus the owner's responsibility for lighting, sight lines and pedestrian routes. Our guide on parking lot and driveway accidents covers it.
- The driver never stopped. Your own uninsured motorist coverage stands in, and Insurance Code 11580.2 sets conditions for an unidentified vehicle, including a report within 24 hours and a sworn statement within 30 days.
- The person hurt was a child. Code of Civil Procedure 352(a) pauses the lawsuit deadline until age 18, and section 352(b) refuses that pause for a claim against a public entity, which still runs on six months.
- You do not own a car. Proposition 213 does not touch you. Civil Code 3333.4 takes pain and suffering from an uninsured owner or operator of a motor vehicle, and a person on foot is neither.
- You were driving instead. See our Glendale car accident lawyer page, or the Pasadena pedestrian accident lawyer page if you were hit across the city line.
- Insurer’s first offer
$150,000What we recovered$950,0006× the first offerPedestrian, broken leg
Struck in a crosswalk by a speeding driver. Traffic camera footage settled the liability fight.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Every case depends on its own facts, injuries, and insurance coverage. Amounts shown are gross recoveries before attorney's fees, costs, and medical liens.
All case resultsNext steps after being hit in Glendale
In a crosswalk, marked or unmarked, the driver owed you the road, and a statute says it in one sentence. Outside one, the driver still owed you due care. The state's own ranking puts this city second worst in its group for people over 65 on foot, which is a fact about the intersections rather than about the person crossing them. The medical record will be split across two hospitals, so it has to be assembled carefully and early.
Our headquarters are in Tarzana, and you do not have to make the drive. Send us the intersection, the date and the hospital, and we pull the report and the transfer records.
Tell us where you were crossing and which hospital treated you. We will tell you which deadline is running and what the file needs.