Written and reviewed by Josh Kohanim, Esq., California Bar No. 328609 · Reviewed
What is different in Long Beach
We represent people struck by a vehicle while walking in Long Beach, and parents of a child hit here. For the wider picture, start at our Long Beach personal injury lawyer page.
How often people are hit walking here
| Category | Killed and injured | Rank |
|---|---|---|
| Pedestrians, all ages | 339 | 2 of 15 |
| Pedestrians under 15 | 30 | 1 of 15 |
| Pedestrians 65 and older | 43 | 3 of 15 |
Rank 1 is the worst rate in the group. A high rank number is good news. The Office of Traffic Safety compares each city only against cities of a similar size, adjusting for population and for Caltrans daily vehicle miles, and it put Long Beach first of fifteen for children on foot. Read the numbers with the caveat the agency states itself: "if a crash report is taken by the CHP on a road with shared jurisdiction, it does not count against the city." Pedestrians struck on state highway segments the Highway Patrol works are not in the 339.
The right of way you were owed
| Section | What it requires | Who it binds |
|---|---|---|
| Veh. Code 21950(a) | Yield to a pedestrian in any marked or unmarked crosswalk at an intersection | Drivers |
| Veh. Code 21950(c) | Approaching a pedestrian in a crosswalk, use all due care and reduce speed | Drivers |
| Veh. Code 21954(b) | The pedestrian's duty to yield outside a crosswalk does not relieve the driver of due care | Drivers |
| Veh. Code 21453(b) | Turning right on red, yield to pedestrians lawfully in an adjacent crosswalk | Drivers |
| Veh. Code 21952 | Yield to a pedestrian on the sidewalk before driving across it | Drivers |
| Veh. Code 22106 | Do not back a vehicle on a highway until it is safe | Drivers |
The sources, in order: section 21950, 21954, 21453, 21952 and 22106. An unmarked crosswalk is the invisible extension of the sidewalk across the road at an intersection, and it carries the same right of way as a painted one. Most people hit on Atlantic Avenue or Anaheim Street have no idea they were standing in one.
A broken statute does more than describe the crash. Negligence per se is the rule letting a jury presume negligence when a driver violated a safety statute and caused the harm it was written to prevent, and Los Angeles juries receive it as CACI 418. The crosswalk duty itself arrives as CACI 710. How each of these plays out across the county is on our Los Angeles pedestrian accident lawyer page, and our post on California crosswalk right of way law walks through the sections one at a time.
Hit outside a crosswalk? Still a claim
The first thing an adjuster says about a Long Beach pedestrian file is that you were not in the crosswalk. Vehicle Code 21954(a) does require a pedestrian outside a crosswalk to yield to vehicles close enough to be an immediate hazard. Subdivision (b) is the sentence adjusters leave out: that duty "shall not relieve the driver of a vehicle from the duty to exercise due care for the safety of any pedestrian upon a roadway."
Vehicle Code 21955, amended by the Freedom to Walk Act effective January 1, 2023, now bars an officer from stopping a pedestrian for crossing between signalized intersections unless a reasonably careful person would see an immediate danger of collision. Comparative fault then does the rest: California divides responsibility by percentage, so a share of the blame reduces what you recover instead of ending it. Proposition 213, which strips pain and suffering from an uninsured driver, does not reach you at all, because Civil Code 3333.4 attaches to owning or operating an uninsured vehicle, and you were on foot.
A child's case runs on two clocks
Thirty children under 15 were hit in this city in one year. Code of Civil Procedure section 352(a) stops the limitations clock while an injured person is under the age of majority, so a child's two year deadline under section 335.1 does not begin until the eighteenth birthday.
The claim against the private driver can wait; the claim against the agency cannot, and both usually come from the same intersection. Our guide on child pedestrian accidents covers school zones and the darting out defense. Every other California deadline sits in one place, our table of California injury deadlines.
Where you are treated and heard
A pedestrian struck at speed in Long Beach is taken to one of two Level II trauma centers inside the city: MemorialCare Long Beach Medical Center, 2801 Atlantic Avenue, which is Level II adult and Level II pediatric, or Dignity Health St. Mary Medical Center, 1050 Linden Avenue. Both are on the California EMS Authority list updated October 22, 2025. An injured child usually goes to the Miller Children's and Women's Hospital campus at the MemorialCare address, which is why the pediatric records in these files are local.
The report comes from the Long Beach Police Department on a city street, or from the California Highway Patrol, South Los Angeles Area, 19700 Hamilton Avenue in Torrance, on a freeway or a shared jurisdiction segment. The lawsuit is filed at the Governor George Deukmejian Courthouse, 275 Magnolia Avenue, because Los Angeles Superior Court Local Rule 2.3 sends injury cases to the district where the incident arose. Long Beach is the South District, and the case does not go downtown.
Four situations that change your claim
- The driver never stopped. Your own uninsured motorist coverage becomes the claim. Insurance Code 11580.2 sets conditions for an unidentified vehicle, including a report within 24 hours and a sworn statement within 30 days, so this is the one situation where a phone call in week one changes the outcome.
- A public agency is involved. A city or transit vehicle, a signal with no pedestrian phase, a crossing the city knew was failing: six months to present a written claim under Government Code 911.2, then 45 days for the agency to act under section 912.4.
- It happened in a parking lot or a driveway. Section 22106 addresses backing on a highway and section 21952 addresses driving across a sidewalk, so a crash deep inside a private lot is argued on the ordinary duty of care in Civil Code 1714 instead, plus the property owner's own responsibility for lighting and sight lines.
- You were on a bicycle rather than on foot. Different statutes entirely, and Long Beach ranks second of fifteen for cyclists: see our Long Beach bicycle accident lawyer page. If two vehicles collided and one struck you afterward, the Long Beach car accident lawyer page covers how that fault is divided.
- 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 resultsWhat to do next in Long Beach
If you were in a crosswalk, marked or not, the driver owed you the road and a statute says so. If you were not, the driver still owed you due care, and your share of the fault comes off the number rather than closing the door. If the person hurt was a child, one clock is paused and another may be running out now.
Our headquarters are in Tarzana, and you do not have to make the drive. Nobody needs to drive it. Send us the intersection, the date and the agency that responded, and we pull the report and the camera footage before it is gone.
Tell us where you were hit and who responded. We will tell you which deadline is running and what the file needs first.