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Do you have a pedestrian accident case?
If a driver's negligence caused your crash while you were walking in Travis or Williamson County, you have a case. The two-year deadline under Texas Civil Practice & Remedies Code §16.003 is the same as for any motor-vehicle claim. What's different is the evidence base, the defendant set, and the notice deadlines when a governmental unit is involved.
We handle pedestrian crash representation across Austin and the surrounding counties. The pages that follow walk through the Texas Tort Claims Act framework that governs claims against the City of Austin and TxDOT, the 45-day Austin charter notice requirement that runs alongside the regular two-year statute of limitations, the geography that shapes where these crashes concentrate per Vision Zero data, and the process from first call through resolution.
What to do in the next 24 hours
Before anything else, before calling any attorney:
- Get medical attention today. Pedestrian crashes produce delayed-onset injuries — concussion, soft-tissue, internal — at higher rates than vehicle-occupant crashes. A same-day medical record is the difference between a documented injury and an insurance defense built around delay.
- Photograph the scene before it's cleared. Skid marks, debris fields, signal phase if it's still cycling, lighting at your point of impact, sight lines from the driver's approach, your point of entry into the crosswalk if applicable. Crash scenes are cleared within hours.
- Document the lighting and weather. Time of day, ambient light, streetlight function, weather. These conditions are the comparative-fault battleground in pedestrian cases and they're hard to reconstruct after the fact.
- Get every witness's contact info. Names, phone numbers, where they were standing, what they saw. Pedestrian cases turn on independent witness testimony more than vehicle-on-vehicle cases.
- Photograph the clothing you were wearing — especially shoes and outerwear. Defense counsel routinely raises visibility arguments. The actual clothing answers them.
- Preserve any electronics on you at the time. Cell phone, smartwatch, fitness tracker. Step counts, GPS, timestamps. Don't reset, don't factory-restore.
- Don't talk to the at-fault driver's insurer. A recorded statement is rarely in your interest. Get advice first.
None of the above requires an attorney. It costs nothing.
What makes a Texas pedestrian case different
Three issues shape every pedestrian case in Texas, and each affects strategy from the first conversation.
The Texas Tort Claims Act when the City of Austin or TxDOT is a defendant. Many pedestrian crashes involve roadway design, signal phasing, sight-line obstruction, or sidewalk defects. Claims against governmental units run through Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code Chapter 101. Two distinct statutory tracks: §101.021(1) waives sovereign immunity for property damage and personal injury caused by a government employee's operation of a motor-driven vehicle (an APD or TxDOT vehicle striking a pedestrian); §101.022 governs premises-defect cases (a defective signal phase, an unsafe roadway condition) and reduces the duty owed to that owed to a licensee unless the claimant pays for the use of the premises. The City of Austin charter (Article XII, Section 3) requires written notice of claim, verified by affidavit, within 45 days — far shorter than the §101.101(a) state-default six-month notice. Article XII §4 categorically bars City liability for sidewalk defects and adds an actual-notice predicate for street, alley, or other public-place defects (other than sidewalks): the City must have had actual knowledge of the defect long enough to remedy it. Missing the 45-day Article XII §3 deadline ends the City claim before suit is possible.
The driver's statutory duties to pedestrians. Texas Transportation Code requires drivers to yield to pedestrians in marked crosswalks at controlled and uncontrolled intersections, to exercise due care to avoid striking pedestrians, and to give warning by sounding the horn when necessary. Statutory duty supports a negligence-per-se framework where the driver's violation of a safety statute is itself evidence of negligence. The defense routinely shifts to comparative-fault arguments — your clothing, your phone, your point of entry. Documenting the signal phase, the lighting, and any nearby surveillance footage answers those defenses.
The hit-and-run problem. A meaningful share of Austin pedestrian crashes involve drivers who flee the scene. Tex. Ins. Code §1952.101 et seq. allows uninsured/underinsured motorist (UM/UIM) coverage to respond to John Doe drivers, subject to the physical-contact requirement of Tex. Ins. Code §1952.104(3). The pursuit of the at-fault driver runs in parallel through APD's hit-and-run unit, traffic-camera footage from the City of Austin and adjacent private businesses, and any witness identification. Camera footage typically overwrites within 30-72 hours; preservation requests go out the first day.
Texas law that governs recovery
The statutory and case-law framework most often invoked in a Texas pedestrian crash case:
- Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code §16.003 — two-year statute of limitations for personal injury and wrongful death (wrongful-death accrues from date of death).
- Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code §33.001 — modified comparative responsibility; recovery barred when claimant fault exceeds 50 percent (the 51 percent bar).
- Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code §101.022 — TTCA premises-defect duty (licensee standard for governmental-unit defendants).
- Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code §101.101(b) — preserves city charter notice requirements; ratifies the Austin Charter art. XII, §3 45-day affidavit-verified notice rule.
- Tex. Ins. Code §1952.101–§1952.110 — UM/UIM coverage requirements and applicability to pedestrian struck-by-vehicle claims.
- Haygood v. De Escabedo, 356 S.W.3d 390 (Tex. 2011) — paid-or-incurred rule limiting past medical recovery to amounts actually paid or owed.
Where Austin pedestrian crashes happen
The geography of pedestrian crashes in Austin is documented and concentrated. The City of Austin's Vision Zero High-Injury Network (HIN) identifies the corridors where serious-injury and fatal pedestrian crashes cluster — six percent of the street network produces roughly two-thirds of the city's serious crashes. The HIN includes North Lamar Boulevard north of Highway 183, East Riverside Drive between I-35 and Pleasant Valley, South Lamar Boulevard in the South Congress corridor, East 7th Street through East Austin, and segments of Cesar Chavez through downtown. The City of Austin Open Data Portal hosts the underlying crash records.
For corridors and segments operated by TxDOT (most of I-35 frontage, US 183, US 290, SH 71), TxDOT design-immunity defenses are real and need to be addressed early. Some segments cross between City and TxDOT operational responsibility — verifying which sovereign owns the segment at the point of impact determines which TTCA framework applies and which notice deadline runs.
Trauma response in central Austin runs through Dell Seton Medical Center; East Austin and downtown also feed Ascension Seton Medical Center. North-Travis and Williamson crashes feed St. David's Round Rock or Baylor Scott & White Round Rock. Trauma center records and EMS run sheets establish injury severity and the sequence of events from scene to hospital.
What is recoverable
Texas damages categories in pedestrian crash cases include:
- Past and future medical care — hospital, surgical, rehabilitation, future-medical projection where injuries are catastrophic. Past medical is limited to amounts actually paid or owed under Haygood v. De Escabedo.
- Past and future lost earnings, including loss of earning capacity — for prospects whose injury impairs ability to work in their pre-incident occupation.
- Physical pain and suffering, past and future.
- Mental anguish.
- Physical impairment.
- Disfigurement — including scarring from road rash, surgery, or fixation hardware.
- Loss of consortium — for spouses and certain family members.
- Exemplary damages under Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code §41.003 — available where the defendant's conduct rises to gross negligence (e.g., DUI, excessive speed in a school zone). Caps under §41.008 apply.
Wrongful-death claims add a separate damages model under Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code Chapter 71 for the statutory beneficiaries.
What the process looks like
Four phases:
Phase 1: investigation and TTCA notice (weeks 1-6). Medical records intake, scene preservation, witness interviews, surveillance preservation requests. If the City of Austin or TxDOT is a defendant, the 45-day Charter art. XII §3 affidavit-verified notice (City) or §101.101(a) six-month notice (state) is the immediate priority. APD report, medical records, prior 311 reports for the location.
Phase 2: building the case (months 1-6). Medical recovery, accumulating bills, designating treating providers, retaining a reconstruction analyst when the crash mechanism is contested. In design-defect or signal-phase cases, retaining an engineering analyst or a human-factors analyst.
Phase 3: pre-suit negotiation OR filing (months 6-18). Cases that resolve pre-suit do so in this window. Cases that don't get filed in the appropriate district court (Travis or Williamson). Discovery, depositions, designation of retained witnesses on roadway design, signal engineering, or human-factors visibility.
Phase 4: trial OR settlement (months 14-28). Mediation typically 60-90 days before trial. The trial calendar drives meaningful settlement leverage.
Why this firm
Direct attorney access. When you call us, you reach an attorney, not an intake coordinator routing you to a paralegal. Anselmo Aguirre handles your case personally — intake, investigation, negotiation, and trial.
Smaller caseload than the firms that advertise on the freeway. We turn down cases for conflict, for fit, and when another firm is a better match for the facts. The cases we take get attention, not assembly-line treatment.
Real Texas-specific work. Statutes by section, hospitals by name, courts by location. The pages on this site are the firm's own analysis, reviewed by Anselmo Aguirre — not borrowed from a content mill.
Frequently asked questions
- I was hit walking in a marked crosswalk. Does that decide fault for me?
- No, but it shifts the analysis significantly. Texas Transportation Code gives pedestrians the right of way in marked crosswalks at controlled and uncontrolled intersections. The driver's statutory duty to yield is strong evidence of negligence per se. Defendants still try to argue you stepped out suddenly, that you were on a phone, that you wore dark clothing at night. Documenting the signal phase, the lighting, your point of entry into the crosswalk, and any witnesses anchors the case against those defenses early.
- The driver was a city employee, or it was a TxDOT vehicle. Does that change anything?
- Yes. Claims against governmental units run through the Texas Tort Claims Act (Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code Chapter 101). For a government employee operating a motor vehicle, sovereign immunity is waived under §101.021(1) — a different track from §101.022 (which governs premises-defect claims like a defective signal phase or unsafe roadway condition). Notice requirements run shorter than ordinary claims regardless of which track applies: the City of Austin charter requires written notice of claim, verified by affidavit, within 45 days of the incident under Article XII, Section 3. Missing that deadline is fatal to the City claim. The 45-day window is the most important date on a TTCA pedestrian case.
- The crash happened on a sidewalk that was broken or missing. Can the City be liable?
- Generally no. Austin Charter Article XII, Section 4 categorically bars City liability for sidewalk defects — the actual-notice cure provision in that same section applies to streets, alleys, and other public places 'other than any sidewalk.' Sidewalk-fall claimants in Austin typically have to look beyond the City: the abutting property owner under common-law premises duties, a contractor that performed defective work, or a utility that left an unrepaired cut. The 45-day Article XII §3 notice deadline still runs against the City for any non-sidewalk theory you do bring; sidewalk-specific theories are typically not against the City at all.
- What if the driver fled the scene?
- Hit-and-run pedestrian cases turn on uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage. Tex. Ins. Code §1952.101 et seq. allows UM/UIM benefits to apply when the at-fault vehicle is unidentified, subject to the physical-contact requirement of Tex. Ins. Code §1952.104(3). Pursuit of the John Doe driver runs in parallel through APD's hit-and-run unit and any traffic-camera footage from City of Austin or private adjacent businesses. Footage typically overwrites within 30-72 hours.
- The intersection has a known pedestrian-crash history. Does that help my case?
- It can. Cases involving signal phasing, sight-line obstruction, or design defects implicate the City's or TxDOT's premises-liability exposure under §101.022 — but the duty owed is only that owed to a licensee unless paid use applies. Vision Zero High-Injury Network data and prior crash records build the foreseeability record. Design-immunity defenses are real and need to be addressed early; not every dangerous intersection produces a viable claim against the governmental unit.
- How does Texas's comparative fault rule apply when I was crossing mid-block?
- Mid-block crossing is not automatically fault. Pedestrians may cross outside marked crosswalks where allowed; the question is whether the crossing was reasonable under the circumstances. Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code §33.001 bars recovery only when the claimant's percentage of responsibility exceeds 50 percent (the 51 percent bar). Comparative-fault percentages between 1 and 50 reduce recovery proportionally. Documenting the lighting, traffic conditions, sight lines, and the driver's speed is what answers the comparative-fault attack.
- What's the deadline to file?
- Two years from the date of the crash for ordinary defendants under Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code §16.003. Wrongful-death claims accrue from the date of death. Claims against the City of Austin or TxDOT are subject to the Texas Tort Claims Act notice requirements: 45 days of written affidavit-verified notice for City of Austin under Charter art. XII, §3; six-month statutory notice for state defendants under §101.101(a) where no charter shortens it. Missing TTCA notice ends the claim before suit is even possible.