Utah Pedestrian Accident Lawyer

This page starts from crash records. We took UDOT's reports from January 1, 2018 through August 4, 2025, kept every crash involving a person on foot, and tied each one to the nearest signal in UDOT's pedestrian and bicycle safety model within 250 feet. The result is 2,105 pedestrian crashes at the model's 1,263 signals in six counties. UDOT coded 352 of them, 16.7%, as Fatal or Suspected Serious Injury: about one in six.

West Injury Law represents people struck by vehicles across Utah. Below are the crash data, the crosswalk statutes, which insurance pays first, and what to do in the days after a crash.

What UDOT's Crash Records Show

Pedestrian crashes cluster. Of the 1,263 modeled signals, 484 recorded none, while 184, or 14.6%, account for half of the 2,105. Salt Lake County has 1,224, or 58.1% of the statewide count, followed by Utah County (340), Weber (231), Davis (173), Washington (78) and Cache (59). Weber's are the most severe, with 22.9% serious or fatal. The single worst signal is 3500 South and Redwood Road in West Valley City, with 23. Counts also hide exposure: UDOT's model estimates about 4,868 people on foot a day at 400 South and 200 East in Salt Lake City and about 98 at Antelope Drive and 1000 East in Clearfield, yet each recorded 10 pedestrian crashes.

What Utah's Crosswalk Statutes Say

Drivers must yield inside a crosswalk. Under Utah Code § 41-6a-1002(1)(a), a driver “shall yield the right-of-way by slowing down or stopping if necessary” to a pedestrian crossing within a crosswalk on the driver's half of the road, or one “approaching so closely from the opposite half of the roadway as to be in danger.” Paint is not required: § 41-6a-102 defines a crosswalk to include the part of an intersection connecting the sidewalks on opposite sides, as well as any spot marked for crossing by lines on the pavement. And when a car has stopped at a crosswalk for someone on foot, a vehicle approaching from behind “may not overtake and pass the stopped vehicle” (§ 41-6a-1002(3)).

Signals and turning drivers. A pedestrian facing a steady Walk signal “has the right-of-way” (§ 41-6a-306(1)). A driver facing a green light, including one turning, must yield “to pedestrians lawfully within the intersection or an adjacent crosswalk” (§ 41-6a-305(2)(a)(ii)), and a driver turning on red must yield to “a pedestrian lawfully within an adjacent crosswalk” (§ 41-6a-305(4)(c)(ii)). Over all of it, § 41-6a-1006 requires every driver to “exercise care to avoid colliding with a pedestrian” and to take “appropriate precaution” on seeing a child or “an obviously confused, incapacitated, or intoxicated person.”

Walking outside a crosswalk. Pedestrians have duties too. Someone crossing anywhere other than a marked crosswalk or an unmarked crosswalk at an intersection “shall yield the right-of-way to all vehicles on the roadway” (§ 41-6a-1003(1)), and between adjacent intersections with working signals, crossing is allowed only in a marked crosswalk (§ 41-6a-1003(3)). No pedestrian may “suddenly leave a curb or other place of safety” into the path of a vehicle “so close as to constitute an immediate hazard” (§ 41-6a-1002(1)(c)). Where a usable sidewalk exists, walking in the road is prohibited (§ 41-6a-1009). A pedestrian's violation affects how fault is divided; it does not erase the driver's duty of care.

School crosswalks. A driver approaching a school crosswalk “shall come to a complete stop at the school crosswalk if the crosswalk is occupied by a person” (§ 41-6a-1002(2)): a full stop, not just a yield. A driver who sees a child must also take the extra precaution in § 41-6a-1006(1)(c).

Shared fault and deadlines. Insurers often argue the person on foot was partly to blame. Under § 78B-5-818, your own fault “may not alone bar recovery”; you recover from defendants whose combined fault exceeds yours, so at 50% or more recovery is barred, and no defendant pays more than its share. Most injury claims against a driver fall under the four-year catch-all in § 78B-2-307(4), “relief not otherwise provided for by law,” and wrongful death has two years under § 78B-2-304(3). If a city, county or UDOT may share blame for how a crossing was designed or maintained, a written notice of claim is due within one year after the claim arises (§ 63G-7-402; requirements in § 63G-7-401), and suit must follow within two years, but not sooner than 60 days after the notice (§ 63G-7-403). See our statute of limitations guide.

Which Insurance Pays When You Were on Foot

Walking does not take you outside Utah's auto insurance system. Personal injury protection (PIP) under § 31A-22-307 covers at least $3,000 per person in necessary medical expenses, plus lost income capped at $250 a week and up to $20 a day for household help. Section 31A-22-308 sets whose policy pays: a named insured is covered “when injured in an accident involving any motor vehicle,” as are relatives living in the household, and anyone else qualifies under the striking car's policy “if the person is a pedestrian who is injured in an accident occurring in Utah involving the described motor vehicle.” If you are insured under more than one policy, § 31A-22-309(4) makes “the policy insuring the motor vehicle in use during the accident” primary. None of this depends on proving who caused the crash. The gap: with no household auto policy and an uninsured or unidentified car, neither route may apply. Our article on whether Utah is a no-fault state explains how PIP and a claim against the driver fit together.

Beyond PIP, § 31A-22-309(1)(a) bars a claim for general damages, such as pain and suffering, by anyone who has or must have PIP, unless the injury involves death, dismemberment, permanent disability or impairment based on objective findings, permanent disfigurement, a bone fracture, or more than $3,000 in medical expenses. Hit-and-run matters here: the crash reports in our count flag 371 of the 2,105 pedestrian crashes, 17.6%, as hit and run. Utah treats “an unidentified motor vehicle that left the scene of an accident proximately caused by the motor vehicle operator” as uninsured (§ 31A-22-305(2)(b)), so your own uninsured motorist coverage can respond, and the threshold does not apply to that claim (§ 31A-22-309(1)(b)). A covered person “injured as a pedestrian by an uninsured motor vehicle” may also recover under any one other policy on which they are covered (§ 31A-22-305(8)(b)(i)). If the car never touched you, § 31A-22-305(6) demands clear and convincing proof beyond your own testimony. See our hit-and-run guide.

What to Do After Being Hit on Foot

Call 911 and ask for an officer to write a report; in a pedestrian case it is often the only same-day record of where you were and which way the car was moving. Get medical care that day even if you can walk, since head, knee and hip injuries can surface later and a gap in treatment becomes an argument against you. If you or a friend can, photograph the crossing from the driver's approach: the signal and walk signal, crosswalk striping or its absence, lighting, anything blocking the view, and the vehicle. Take the names and numbers of witnesses before they leave. Then move fast on video. Store, doorbell and bus cameras often overwrite footage within days, and some traffic cameras stream live without saving anything, so ask in writing right away for whatever exists. Keep your shoes and clothing, and hold off on a recorded statement to the driver's insurer until you know your own coverage.

When the Worst Pedestrian Crashes Happen

Darkness is the strongest pattern. Of the 2,105 pedestrian crashes, 718, or 34.1%, happened in the dark, yet they account for 165 of the 352 serious or fatal ones, 46.9%. After dark, 23.0% were serious or fatal; in daylight, 12.7%. The 3 to 7 p.m. window had the most crashes, 633, but 7 p.m. to midnight had the most serious or fatal ones, 104. Over the complete years 2018 through 2024, September through December held 798 of 1,924 pedestrian crashes, 41.5%. The reports flagged an impaired driver in 23 crashes, and 15 of those were serious or fatal. Speed is less tidy than people expect: at signals in the 52 cities we counted, the serious-or-fatal share was 19.0% where the faster street is posted 30 mph or less, 16.6% at 35, 15.4% at 40 and 19.2% at 45 or more, with no steady rise. All ten signals with the most pedestrian crashes have an estimated current limit of 35 or 40 mph on the faster street, and UDOT's state-route inventory shows continuous sidewalk on every inventoried segment near all ten. Severity stands out at SR-193 and the I-15 northbound off-ramp in Clearfield: 5 of 9 pedestrian crashes there were serious or fatal, UDOT's 2026 layer puts SR-193 at 50 mph, and the inventory shows sidewalk absent along one side within 150 meters.

Pedestrian Accident Lawyers by City

• Salt Lake County: Cottonwood Heights, Draper, Herriman, Holladay, Millcreek, Murray, Riverton, Salt Lake City, Sandy, South Jordan, Taylorsville, West Jordan and West Valley City.
• Utah County: American Fork, Eagle Mountain, Lehi, Orem, Pleasant Grove, Provo, Saratoga Springs and Spanish Fork.
• Davis and Weber counties: Bountiful, Farmington, Kaysville, Layton and Ogden.
• Washington, Iron and Summit counties: St. George, Cedar City and Park City.

What the Numbers Can and Cannot Show

These counts have limits. Only crashes police documented reach UDOT's database, so unreported collisions and those below the state's reporting thresholds are missing. Severity, lighting and the hit-and-run and impairment flags are coded by the investigating officer, not found by a court. Crashes more than 250 feet from a modeled signal, mid-block or in parking lots, are not counted, and the feed stops on August 4, 2025. Speed limits are estimates of today's limits from UDOT's 2026 state-route layer and UGRC's Utah Roads data and may differ from the limit at the time of a crash. For signal-by-signal rankings, see Utah's most dangerous intersections; for every crash type ranked by street, Utah's most dangerous roads; and for right of way and blame in a claim, our article on pedestrian accident claims in Utah.