Larger Vehicles Causing a Surge in Pedestrian Deaths

By David B. Pittman, Esq. — Founder, Pittman Law Firm, P.L. | Last updated May 12, 2026

Vehicles are taller, heavier, and blunter on the front end than they were when I started practicing, and the human body has not changed. A walker in a Bonita Springs crosswalk in 2026 is squaring up against a front end that is fifteen inches higher and a thousand pounds heavier than the one that was on the road in 1995. The injury patterns we see now are different, and the settlements have to reflect that.

I have been representing pedestrians struck by cars, pickups, and SUVs across Lee and Collier Counties for over thirty years. What follows is what Florida law actually says about these cases, the patterns I see in our office week to week, and what to do if you or someone you love is the one on foot.

What Florida law actually says about pedestrian-injury cases

A pedestrian case in Florida usually turns on a handful of statutes. They are not as complicated as they sound, but the defense bar leans hard on the wording, so it pays to know them.

§316.130, Florida Statutes — crosswalks. This is the yield rule. Drivers must yield the right-of-way to a pedestrian crossing within a marked crosswalk, and also at an unmarked crosswalk at an intersection where there is no signal. In plain English: if you are walking across a street at a corner, even with no painted lines on the pavement, the law treats that as a crosswalk and the cars are supposed to stop for you. The flip side is that pedestrians cannot suddenly step off a curb into the path of a vehicle that is too close to stop. Where the two rules collide is where most of our pedestrian cases live.

§627.736, Florida Statutes — PIP. Florida’s Personal Injury Protection statute is best known for covering drivers, but it also covers pedestrians who are members of a household that owns an auto policy. If a pickup runs you down in a Naples crosswalk and you do not own a car yourself, but your spouse does, your spouse’s PIP usually pays the first $10,000 of medical bills and lost wages. People miss this all the time and pay medical bills out of pocket they did not have to pay.

§627.727, Florida Statutes — UM/UIM. Uninsured and Underinsured Motorist coverage is the single most overlooked source of money in pedestrian cases. The at-fault driver in a SWFL pedestrian case often has bare-minimum bodily injury limits — $10,000 or $25,000. Those limits do not begin to cover a tibia-fibula fracture with a titanium rod, much less a head injury. If the pedestrian or anyone in the pedestrian’s household carries UM coverage on a personal auto policy, that coverage typically applies to the pedestrian and stacks on top of whatever the driver’s carrier pays. We pull every household auto policy on every pedestrian case for exactly this reason.

And one statute that is not on the page but governs the math of every case: Florida’s 2023 modified comparative negligence rule. If a jury finds the pedestrian more than 50% at fault, the pedestrian recovers nothing. That is a hard wall. It is why the defense always tries to pin the fault percentage on the person on foot — “darted out,” “wasn’t in the crosswalk,” “was on a phone” — and why proving the actual right-of-way picture is the whole ballgame in these cases.

The pedestrian patterns that turn into claims

People assume pedestrian crashes are all the same — somebody walking, somebody driving, somebody at fault. Thirty years into representing crash victims across Lee and Collier Counties, I can tell you they cluster into a handful of patterns, and the patterns matter because each one has its own evidence problem.

• The left-turn-at-the-light pedestrian. Light turns green, pedestrian steps off the curb with the walk signal, oncoming driver turns left across the crosswalk and hits the walker because the driver was watching for a gap in traffic, not for a person. This is the most common pattern we see on US-41 / Tamiami Trail through Bonita Springs and Naples. Driver almost always says “I didn’t see them.”
• The right-on-red rolling stop. Driver coming up to a red light, intending to turn right, eyes locked left looking for cross traffic, never looks right at the crosswalk, rolls into the walker. The injury is usually a knee or hip, sometimes worse if it is a tall pickup.
• The mid-block in a six-lane stretch. Long sections of US-41 and Pine Ridge Road have crosswalks more than a quarter mile apart. People cross mid-block because they have to. Florida law lets them, with the duty to yield to traffic, but every defense lawyer in the state treats it as automatic 50%-plus on the pedestrian. Beating that argument is a video-and-physics problem.
• The parking lot reverse. Tall pickup or SUV reversing out of a spot at a strip plaza, driver cannot see anything under the rear glass, walker (often a child or an older shopper) gets backed over. Cameras above the storefront sometimes catch this, but the footage has a short shelf life.
• The hit-and-run on a dark stretch. Most often on the I-75 corridor through Lee and Collier Counties on the surface arterials that feed it. Driver hits, panics, leaves. These are the cases where UM coverage is the entire recovery, because there is no at-fault policy to collect from. We have run these cases on nothing but the client’s own household UM policy and made them whole.

Pedestrian cases — why these are harder than they look

A pedestrian case looks simple from the outside. Driver hit walker. Driver pays. In thirty years of practice, I have never seen one go that way without a fight. Three reasons:

Reason one: vehicle design has gotten worse for pedestrians. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has been clear about this for years — vehicles with taller, blunter front ends are about 45% more likely to kill a pedestrian than passenger cars with sloped hoods. If you get hit by a sedan, the bumper catches your legs and your torso rolls onto the hood. If you get hit by a 2024 pickup, the bumper catches your hips or your chest, and your head meets the hood at full impact speed. The injury profile we see in our office today — multiple lower-extremity fractures plus closed head injury — was not what we saw twenty years ago. The medical specials are higher because the injuries are worse.

Reason two: the front blind zone on a modern pickup is enormous. On some current full-size pickups and SUVs, a driver of average height cannot see the first eleven feet in front of the hood. A child standing in front of the bumper is invisible. An adult kneeling to tie a shoe is invisible. The driver pulls forward, and there is genuinely no point at which they could have seen what they were about to hit. That does not get the driver off the hook — the legal duty is to know what is in front of you before you move — but it changes how the case has to be proven. Sometimes we end up with claims against both the driver and the manufacturer of the vehicle.

Reason three: the witness problem. The driver who hit your client was, almost by definition, not paying attention. They will give a story that is more flattering to themselves than the facts justify. The pedestrian, if they are hurt badly enough, may not remember the impact at all. So the case becomes a contest between a self-serving driver statement and whatever objective evidence is left at the scene — video, vehicle damage pattern, point of impact debris, headlight illumination at the time of day in question. That is why the first phone call to us inside the first 72 hours matters. After a week, video is gone.

A crosswalk case from our files

A few years back we represented a woman who was crossing a North Naples street, in a marked crosswalk, with the signal. A driver coming the other way made a left turn across the crosswalk and never saw her until the impact. She was thrown, landed on the pavement, and ended up with a broken tibia and fibula in the same leg. The orthopedic surgeon put a titanium rod down the length of the bone. She was non-weight-bearing for months.

The driver’s carrier opened the file by telling us our client had “darted out.” That is the phrase they always use. The carrier had already taken a recorded statement from the driver before we got involved and built the file around it. What turned the case was traffic-camera footage from a pole at the intersection. The video showed our client walking — not running, not darting — into the crosswalk with the walk signal, with the driver coming the other way at speed and never slowing. Once the carrier saw the video, the “darted out” story died.

We settled the bodily-injury claim for the driver’s full policy limits. Between the at-fault policy and the household UM, we got our client to full compensation. The piece I want people to take away from that story is the second policy. Without the UM, we would have had a policy-limits case for a fraction of what the injuries were actually worth. With it, we made her whole.

What to do if you or a family member is hit on foot

This is the advice I give every pedestrian client in the first meeting. It is not a generic action list. Each one of these is in here because I have watched the absence of it sink a case.

1. Get the police report number, not just a card. Florida pedestrian-crash police reports are public records but the case number is the only fast way to pull the version with the diagram. Without the diagram, the carrier will fight the point of impact for months.
2. Photograph the driver’s vehicle before it moves, if you safely can. The dent pattern on the hood and bumper tells the story of where the body hit and at what height. Insurance adjusters know this. A clean photo of the front end at the scene is worth ten witness statements two weeks later.
3. Note every camera you can see — and the address it is mounted on. Traffic camera at the intersection. Doorbell camera on the house across the street. Bank ATM camera at the corner. Storefront camera at the gas station. Most of those systems overwrite in 7 to 30 days. We can send preservation letters as soon as you give us the addresses, but we have to know the addresses.
4. Do not give a recorded statement to the at-fault driver’s insurance carrier. They will call within forty-eight hours and they will be friendly. Decline politely and tell them to talk to your lawyer. There is no version of that recorded statement that helps you.
5. Get every auto policy in your household to me on day one. Yours. Your spouse’s. Your adult child’s, if they live with you. PIP under §627.736 and UM under §627.727 both can attach to a pedestrian based on household residency. We have rescued cases that looked like nothing by finding a second policy nobody thought to look at.
6. See a doctor the same day, even if you think you are fine. Adrenaline masks injury for the first twelve to twenty-four hours. Florida’s PIP statute also has a 14-day rule — if you do not see a medical provider inside fourteen days of the crash, the carrier can deny PIP entirely. That alone has wrecked cases.
7. Save the shoes and clothing you were wearing. Sounds small. The defense in pedestrian cases sometimes argues “dark clothing, dusk, driver couldn’t see.” A pair of jeans and a white t-shirt in a paper bag in your closet can answer that argument cold.

Key Takeaways

• Vehicle design has shifted the injury profile in pedestrian crashes — taller, blunter front ends produce torso and head injuries that older sedans did not, which means modern pedestrian cases need bigger medical workups and bigger settlements.
• Florida §316.130 puts the yield duty on the driver in a crosswalk, but the 2023 modified comparative negligence rule means the defense will still try to pin 51%+ fault on the pedestrian. Early evidence work decides that fight.
• PIP under §627.736 and Uninsured/Underinsured Motorist coverage under §627.727 can both attach to a pedestrian through a household auto policy — pull every policy in the home before assuming there is no coverage.
• Florida’s statute of limitations for negligence is two years on crashes that happened on or after March 24, 2023. Two years passes faster than people think.
• Video evidence — traffic cameras, doorbell cameras, storefront cameras — beats the “darted out” defense almost every time, but most of that footage overwrites within 7 to 30 days, which is why the first call to a lawyer should happen the same week as the crash.

Frequently Asked Questions

If a pickup or SUV hits a pedestrian in a Florida crosswalk, does the size of the vehicle change who is at fault?

Fault is decided by who had the right-of-way, not by what the driver was driving. Under §316.130, a driver has to yield to a pedestrian inside a marked crosswalk or at an unmarked crosswalk at an intersection. A bigger truck does not give the driver a bigger right to the road. What vehicle size does change is how badly the pedestrian gets hurt, and that drives the damages side of the case.

I was hit on foot by a driver with only state-minimum coverage. Do I have any other source of money?

Often yes. Under §627.736, a pedestrian who lives in a household with an auto policy can usually open PIP under that household’s policy, even though they were on foot. Under §627.727, if anyone in your household carries Uninsured/Underinsured Motorist coverage, that coverage typically extends to you as a pedestrian and can be stacked on top of the at-fault driver’s policy. We almost always pull a copy of every household auto policy on a pedestrian case for that reason.

The driver who hit me says I “darted out.” What proof actually beats that?

Video. Traffic-camera footage, intersection cameras, nearby business surveillance, a doorbell camera across the street, dashcam from the car behind. We move fast on a pedestrian case because most of that footage gets overwritten in 7 to 30 days. After video, the next-best evidence is the physical scene — point of impact, where the pedestrian’s belongings landed, the vehicle’s damage pattern — which is why a reconstruction engineer can matter even when the police report is thin.

How long do I have to file a pedestrian-injury case in Florida?

For pedestrian crashes on or after March 24, 2023, Florida’s statute of limitations for negligence is two years. That is shorter than the old four-year window, and it catches people who assume they still have plenty of time. If a pedestrian was killed, the wrongful-death window is also two years. Call before that clock runs.

Is Florida’s modified comparative negligence rule a problem for pedestrians?

It can be, which is why the early evidence work matters. Under the 2023 statute, if you are found more than 50% at fault, you recover nothing. The defense in pedestrian cases almost always tries to push the fault percentage onto the person on foot. Pinning down the right-of-way, the crosswalk status, lighting, and the driver’s speed and attention is how we keep that percentage where it belongs.

If you or a family member was hit on foot, call our office

If you or someone you love was struck by a vehicle as a pedestrian anywhere in Lee or Collier County, call our office at 239-992-8259 for a free consultation. I will sit down with you, pull every household auto policy, send the preservation letters for the camera footage, and tell you straight what the case is worth. There is no fee unless we recover for you. The sooner we are involved, the more of the evidence we can still save.

About the Author

David B. Pittman, Esq. has practiced personal injury law across Southwest Florida for more than thirty years, and is the founder of Pittman Law Firm, P.L., with a sustained focus on pedestrian-injury and crosswalk cases. The firm represents injured clients across Lee and Collier Counties — Bonita Springs, Fort Myers, Naples, Estero, Cape Coral, and Lehigh Acres — with offices in Bonita Springs and Fort Myers.

David’s education began at The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina, and was followed by the University of South Carolina School of Law. His honors include an AV-Preeminent rating at Martindale-Hubbell and membership in the Multi-Million Dollar Advocates Forum.

David has held a Florida real estate broker license for twenty-five years, a credential that shapes how the firm reads the property side of premises cases. The firm handles personal injury cases across Lee and Collier Counties, serving Fort Myers, Bonita Springs, Naples, Cape Coral, Estero, and Lehigh Acres, with offices at Windsor Place in Bonita Springs (main) and Fort Myers (satellite). Call 239-992-8259 for a free consultation.

The information on this page is general legal information about Florida personal injury practice and is not legal advice for any particular case. Reading this page does not create an attorney-client relationship with Pittman Law Firm, P.L. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.