SALT LAKE COUNTY
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Midvale is a small city carrying a large amount of other people's infrastructure. A US highway runs down its spine. A freeway cuts through the middle of it. Two TRAX lines and three rail stations sit inside the city limits. Most of the pavement people get hurt on in Midvale is not owned by Midvale — it belongs to UDOT, to UTA, or to Salt Lake County. That matters more than it sounds, and we come back to it below.
Five to seven lanes of through traffic running past shopfronts, bus stops and apartment entrances. People cross it because the destination is right there and the signal is not. Pedestrian crashes recur along this stretch, and the distance between signalized crossings is a large part of why. UDOT has been resurfacing this stretch and rebuilding pedestrian ramps between I-215 and 9400 South.
A single-point urban interchange at I-15 exit 297, with State Street only three blocks further east. Traffic coming off the freeway is still moving at freeway speed when it meets turning cars, cyclists and people walking to the Midvale Fort Union platform. Left-turn and failure-to-yield collisions cluster here. Pedestrians have been struck on 7200 South itself, away from the interchange.
The freeway narrows the city into a strip. Rear-end and lane-change crashes build in the stop-and-go between the 7200 South and 9000 South exits, particularly on the northbound morning run. Statewide, the single leading cause of fatal crashes in Utah is failure to keep in proper lane, at 27 percent. On I-15 that is the drift into the next lane at 70 mph. The Utah Highway Patrol works these, not city police.
Bingham Junction on the Red Line at about 7387 South, plus Midvale Fort Union at 7250 South and Midvale Center at 7720 South on the Blue Line. Trains cross roads at grade. Riders step off platforms into traffic, drivers turn across tracks, and people get hurt on platforms, stairs and buses as well as in front of trains. A claim from any of these is a claim against a government body.
In Midvale, the clock can be one year instead of four
Because so much of Midvale is UTA, UDOT and county property, a large share of injuries here involve a government entity. If a UTA train or bus, a city or county vehicle, a UDOT work zone, or an unrepaired road hazard played a part in your crash, the Governmental Immunity Act requires a written notice of claim within ONE year — not the four years that apply to an ordinary crash. Miss it and the claim is gone, however strong it was. If there was a train, a bus, a marked truck or a coned-off lane anywhere near your crash, treat the deadline as one year until a lawyer tells you otherwise.
Every Utah auto policy carries personal injury protection. Under Utah Code § 31A-22-307, your own insurer pays at least the first $3,000 of medical bills and 85% of lost wages, no matter who caused the crash. You use it first. It is meant to get you seen quickly without an argument about blame.
It is also a ceiling. Three thousand dollars does not go far. An ambulance from State Street to the Level I trauma center at Intermountain Medical Center in Murray, an emergency scan and one night can pass it before anyone has treated the actual injury. Until you step outside no-fault, you cannot claim from the driver who hit you for pain, for the rest of your wages, or for long-term care.
You step outside no-fault when any one of these is true (Utah Code § 31A-22-309):
This is one reason to keep going to your appointments and to keep every bill, including the ones from Alta View in Sandy or an urgent care off State Street. The threshold is met with records, not with recollection.
Utah Code § 78B-5-818 divides blame between everyone involved. Your recovery drops by your own share. At 50% or more, you recover nothing at all. Not a reduced amount. Nothing.
Insurers know exactly where that line sits and push toward it. On a corridor like State Street the argument writes itself: you crossed away from a marked crossing, so you are the cause. It is worth remembering that crossings are not evenly spaced along that road, that signals are timed for traffic volume, and that a driver still has a duty to look. In 2024 Utah recorded 59,437 crashes, 27,094 injuries and 277 fatalities. Failure to yield caused 13% of the fatal ones, and running off the road another 7%. Those are driver failures, and they do not stop being driver failures because the person hit was on foot.
The percentage is settled by evidence — the dashcam, the signal timing, the skid marks, the position of the vehicles, the statements taken while memories were fresh. Which is why the first two weeks matters more than the following year.
Your deadlines
FOUR years to file most injury claims from a vehicle crash, under Utah Code § 78B-2-307. TWO years for wrongful death. ONE year to file a notice of claim against a government entity — UTA, a city or county vehicle, UDOT, or an unrepaired road hazard. In Midvale, that last one comes up far more often than people expect.
Mostly on State Street and 7200 South, and mostly involving people walking between a bus stop, a rail platform and home. These are the cases where the insurer starts by blaming the person on foot. They are also the cases where injuries are worst, because there is nothing between a person and the vehicle.
Rear-end impacts in freeway queues, sideswipes on merges, and left-turn collisions at the exit 297 interchange. Low-speed does not mean low-injury: neck and back injuries from a 25 mph rear-end can take months to declare themselves, and insurers treat the delay as proof nothing happened.
Three rail stations sit inside Midvale, on two separate lines, and buses feed all of them. Being struck by a train, being hurt on a platform or stairway, a fall on a bus, or a crash with a bus are all claims against a government entity with a one-year notice deadline. Do not wait on these.
The Bingham Junction redevelopment brought offices and distribution traffic into the west side of the city, and delivery vans work the State Street and Main Street blocks all day. Commercial policies are larger, but so are the legal teams behind them, and evidence such as telematics data and driver logs disappears unless it is demanded early.
Utah applies strict liability to dog owners. The owner is responsible for the bite whether or not the dog had ever bitten before, and whether or not they knew it might. We also handle falls and injuries caused by unsafe stairs, ice, poor lighting and unrepaired walkways in apartment buildings and parking lots.
If your case is filed, it goes to the Third Judicial District Court at the Matheson Courthouse, 450 South State Street, which handles civil claims for every city in Salt Lake County. Most cases settle without a trial, but they settle on the strength of what has been gathered and preserved, and insurers can tell the difference between a file that is ready for court and one that is not. If a government entity is involved, the one-year notice of claim must be served long before any of that begins. Call (801) 921-5134 and you speak to Christian West about your case, not to an intake queue. Hablamos Español.
This page is general information about Utah law, not legal advice about your situation. Every case turns on its own facts. Past results do not guarantee a future outcome.