Pedestrian Accident Settlement Calculator

Published by The Click Lab Agency LLC. Last reviewed September 2026. Not legal advice.

A pedestrian claim is valued the way an insurance adjuster values it, in four steps. First, add up the economic damages: medical bills, lost income, and future care. Second, estimate pain and suffering by multiplying the medical costs by a factor that rises with injury severity — roughly 2× for soft-tissue injuries up to 7× for a brain or spinal cord injury. Third, reduce the total by the pedestrian’s own share of fault under that state’s rule, which in five jurisdictions means any fault at all wipes the claim out. Fourth, cap the result at the insurance that is actually available, because a $900,000 claim against a driver with a $25,000 policy and no assets is a $25,000 claim unless the pedestrian carries uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage of their own.

Most online calculators stop after step two. This one runs all four, and the worked examples below show why the last two steps usually decide the real number.

Run the estimate

Medical costs (USD — ER, surgery, hospitalization, rehab, future care) Lost wages and lost earning capacity (USD) Injury severity Pedestrian fault percentage (comparative negligence) Your state’s fault rule (see the table below) Available insurance (USD — driver’s bodily-injury limit plus any umbrella and your own UM/UIM; leave 0 if unknown)

Worked examples

These use the calculator’s own multipliers so you can check the tool against a case that resembles yours.

Example 1 — Clean liability, moderate injury, Texas, minimum policy

A driver ran a red light and struck a pedestrian in a marked crosswalk. The pedestrian suffered a fractured wrist that healed without surgery: $18,000 in medical bills and $4,000 in lost wages. Economic damages are $22,000. The moderate-injury multiplier of 3.5× on medical costs gives $63,000 in pain and suffering, plus 2× lost wages ($8,000), for gross damages of $93,000. Fault is 0%, so nothing comes off. But the driver carries the Texas minimum bodily-injury limit of $30,000 per person and has no other assets. Unless the pedestrian has UM/UIM coverage on their own auto policy, the realistic recovery is $30,000, and the adjuster will tender it early. This is the most common way a strong claim turns into a small check.

Example 2 — Shared fault, severe injury, California

The pedestrian crossed mid-block at night; the driver was speeding. Surgery and a long hospital stay produced $140,000 in bills, $35,000 in lost wages, and a $60,000 future-care estimate, so medical costs total $200,000 and economic damages $235,000. The severe-injury multiplier of 5× gives $1,000,000 in pain and suffering plus $70,000 for lost wages: gross damages of $1,305,000. California is a pure comparative negligence state; the adjuster assigns the pedestrian 40% fault. Net value is $783,000. The driver carries a $100,000/$300,000 policy and a $1,000,000 umbrella, so the claim is fully collectible. The fight in a case like this is over the fault percentage, because every 10 points is worth about $130,000.

Example 3 — Same facts as Example 2, but in Virginia

Virginia is a pure contributory negligence state. With 40% fault assigned to the pedestrian, the claim value is $0. The only path to recovery is defeating the fault finding entirely — showing the pedestrian was not negligent at all, or invoking the last-clear-chance doctrine, under which a driver who had the final opportunity to avoid the collision can be held fully liable despite the pedestrian’s negligence. In Alabama, Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia, and the District of Columbia, attorneys litigate the fault allocation before anything else, because nothing else matters until it is won.

State fault rules

The fault rule is set by the state where the collision happened, not where you live. Several states have amended their rules in recent years; confirm the current rule for your state before relying on this table.

Rule	Effect on the claim	States
Pure comparative negligence	Recover your damages minus your percentage of fault, at any fault level short of 100%	Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, Washington
Modified comparative — 51% bar	Recover, reduced by your fault, only if your fault is 50% or less	Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Vermont, Wisconsin, Wyoming
Modified comparative — 50% bar	Recover, reduced by your fault, only if your fault is less than 50%	Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota (slight/gross variant), Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia
Pure contributory negligence	Any fault on your part bars recovery entirely, subject to last clear chance	Alabama, District of Columbia, Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia

How pedestrian accident claims work

Pedestrian accident claims follow the same personal injury framework as car accident claims, but with higher damages because the injuries are more severe. The driver’s auto bodily-injury liability coverage is the primary source of recovery. If the driver is uninsured or underinsured, the pedestrian’s own uninsured/underinsured motorist (UM/UIM) coverage applies — and it applies even though the pedestrian was on foot. Pedestrians struck in a crosswalk with the signal, or by an impaired driver, face the least comparative-fault pressure and hold the strongest liability positions in this category of claim.

The pain and suffering multiplier

The calculator applies multipliers to medical costs and lost wages to estimate non-economic damages (pain, suffering, loss of enjoyment of life, permanent disability). The multipliers for pedestrian accidents run higher than for standard car accident claims because pedestrian injury severity is systematically higher: catastrophic injuries use 7× medical costs, severe 5×, moderate 3.5×, minor 2×, plus 2× lost wages in every tier. The methodology page documents where these figures come from and how the range around the midpoint is set.

What this calculator does not do

It does not value wrongful-death claims, which follow a separate statute and a different damages model. It does not model no-fault/PIP thresholds in the no-fault states, medical liens that must be repaid from the settlement (Medicare, Medicaid, ERISA health plans, and workers’ compensation carriers when the accident happened on the job), dram-shop claims against a bar that served an impaired driver, government-entity immunity when a city is a defendant over a dangerous crossing, or punitive damages in DUI cases. It does not predict jury verdicts; the multipliers reflect settlement ranges, and trial outcomes are wider in both directions. Treat the output as an order-of-magnitude starting point.

Where to learn more

See how pedestrian accident claims work, pedestrian accident fault and comparative negligence, what to do after a pedestrian accident, common misconceptions, and the calculator methodology.

Where to get help

Start by requesting the police report and the driver’s insurance information, and open a claim with the driver’s carrier yourself; you do not need a lawyer to do that, and for a minor injury with clear liability it is often enough. Check your own auto policy (or a household member’s) for UM/UIM coverage, which follows you on foot. If there is a surgery, a disputed fault allocation, a policy-limits problem, or a contributory-negligence state, a personal injury attorney works on contingency and the difference in outcome usually justifies the fee. Your state bar’s lawyer referral service is a neutral starting point. If you would like The Click Lab to pass your details to an attorney in its network, the optional form below does that; it is a disclosed referral product, and our privacy policy explains what is shared.

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