While reckless, negligent, or intoxicated drivers are often responsible for accidents involving pedestrian injuries and deaths, the act of a pedestrian can also cause serious car crashes. In fact, one study in Florida found that pedestrians were responsible for a full 80 percent of pedestrian-vehicle crashes. Careful drivers may swerve in an effort to protect a pedestrian who is wrongfully in the roadway, causing a chain reaction involving other drivers and ending in serious injuries. If you were hurt in a car accident caused by a pedestrian’s careless actions, contact a Houston personal injury attorney to find out your options.
How Do Pedestrians Cause Car Accidents?
Most pedestrian-auto accidents happen between three and six p.m., when people are leaving work or going out to run errands after work or school. However, most pedestrian accidents involving fatalities happen later in the day, when it is dark and harder to see pedestrians in the roadway. While pedestrians are often struck as they try to cross legally at intersections, the vast majority (nearly 70 percent) occur at places other than intersections.
This is because pedestrians often engage in unsafe behavior when they try to cross the road outside of traffic control areas, especially at night. These include, but are not limited to:
- Jaywalking
- Drunkenly stumbling into the road
- Failing to see a car coming
- Walking while distracted by a phone or other device
- Losing control of a cart or baby stroller and chasing it into the road
- Chasing an animal into the road
- Misunderstanding traffic laws
- Jogging or walking in the road
Drivers trying to avoid pedestrians illegally in the road may reflexively try to avoid the pedestrian, causing further dangers. These include:
- Running off the road and into a stationary object
- Swerving, losing control, and rolling over
- Swerving into another lane and side-swiping another car
- Swerving into oncoming traffic
These behaviors, which occur through no fault of the driver, can put the driver, their passengers, and other drivers on the road at risk of serious injury or death. As with any other injury that occurs because of someone else’s reckless, negligent, or illegal behavior, those injured because of a pedestrian’s actions may be able to take legal action against the pedestrian.
Schedule a Free Consultation with a Harris County Car Accident Attorney
Even if the pedestrian who caused the accident was seriously injured, you still deserve compensation for injuries you suffered through no fault of your own. To learn more about what action you can take following a car accident caused by a pedestrian’s carelessness, contact an experienced Houston, TX car accident injury lawyer with Law Office of Shane R. Kadlec at 281-643-2000.
Source:
https://popcenter.asu.edu/content/pedestrian-injuries-fatalities-0
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