Every year, nearly five thousand pedestrians die in traffic accidents, and another 78,000 are injured, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Association (NHTSA). Thousands of pedestrian accidents that do not involve a motorized vehicle also occur annually--often as a result of substandard property maintenance, construction, defects in sidewalks and parking lots, and debris on walkways.

A pedestrian may be entitled to compensation for damages if a moving vehicle or property defect causes his accident or injury if he can prove that someone was negligent. Under the law, someone can be considered negligent if he fails to take reasonable action to protect others from foreseeable harm. A pedestrian injured in an accident can often prove the negligence of the defendant if the latter owed a legal duty to the victim, failed to fulfill that duty, caused an injury, and harmed the victim in the process.

Courts deciding such cases look carefully at the facts of the accident. More than one party may be liable for the accident. Those who are potentially liable include:

Drivers who hit pedestrians with their cars
The agency or individual responsible for sidewalk, road, or lot maintenance where the accident took place
The pedestrian himself

Pedestrian/Car Accidents

Drivers and pedestrian must obey the rules of the road and exercise reasonable care for the safety of others. It may seem intuitively obvious that one or another party was negligent, but courts examine negligence as it is defined by the law. Someone who is negligent in the way he drives his car or other vehicle may end up having to pay damages for injuries and property damage resulting from that negligence.

Driver’s Duty of Care

Drivers of motorized vehicles must exercise what the law deems “reasonable care under the circumstances.” Failure to do so may result in a verdict of negligence. The following factors contribute to negligence in a driver:

Driving while intoxicated or influenced by drugs or alcohol
Ignoring adverse traffic or weather conditions
Failing to signal a turn
Failing to obey traffic signs or lights
Failure to yield to pedestrians who are crossing at designated crosswalks
Exceeding the speed limit
Being pre-occupied or inattentive

Driver’s Special Duty to Children

Children age’s five to nine are at the highest risk of being hit by a car or other motor vehicle. This is partly because they are smaller, less visible, and their behavior can be unpredictable. United States law says that drivers must exercise extra caution when driving in the vicinity of children. If you see one or more children, you should immediately exercise even more care and attention to prevent accidents. This principle particularly applies when one is driving past a school, playground, or residential neighborhood where children are likely to be present.

Pedestrian’s Duty of Care

United States law says that pedestrians, too, must take reasonable steps to ensure their own safety. A pedestrian can be found guilty of contributing to an accident if he did not take those reasonable steps.

Here are some of the reasons a pedestrian can be found to have contributed to the accident:

Crossing against the “don’t walk” sign
Entering a stream of vehicular traffic and disrupting the flow
Failing to use designated crosswalks when crossing streets
Darting in front of a vehicle

Other Pedestrian Accidents

In most states, property owners have some degree of responsibility to maintain their premises in good working order so that they do not pose a danger to pedestrians and to warn people of dangers that cannot be remedied.

When someone is injured while walking across another’s property, the injured person must prove that the property was dangerous in some way and that the property owner knew of the hazard in order to win damages. A dangerous condition is defined under the law as something that represents an unreasonable risk, but not an obvious one. The property owner can be deemed knowledgeable of the danger if he created it, knew about it but failed to correct it, or the condition persisted for so long that it should have been discovered and fixed before an accident occurred.

Private property owners are usually not responsible if a pedestrian falls and injures himself on a public sidewalk located outside his property. Some business owners, however, have been found liable when their customers exclusively use that sidewalk.

What To Do If You Are In a Pedestrian Accident

If you have been hurt in a pedestrian accident, you should know that other parties may try to blame you and claim that you caused the accident through your own negligence. If you are involved in a pedestrian accident, you should:

● Call the police right away
● Stay on the scene of the accident until help arrives
● Ask witnesses for names and telephone numbers
● Make no statements to anyone, including drivers or insurers
● Call a qualified accident or personal injury lawyer in Toronto

About Author:

Jim is the expert writer who has good knowledge in writing articles on injury lawyers in Toronto. For more information on personal injury lawyers in Toronto visit this site http://bestpersonalinjurylawyerstoronto.ca/