Fort Wayne Pedestrian Accident Lawyer

A driver turned across your path, or pulled out into a lane you had already stepped into, and you were on foot with nothing between you and the vehicle. You may be reading this from a hospital bed, or reading it for someone who cannot read it for themselves. What follows is the Indiana law that decides a pedestrian claim: what the driver owed you, how long you have to bring the claim, and what your own share of the blame does to it. Alongside that is what the state’s own crash and risk data says about the streets you were walking on. Our pedestrian practice page sets out the same Indiana law that applies everywhere in the state; this page is about how it lands in Fort Wayne.

How Does Blackburn Romey Handle a Fort Wayne Pedestrian Injury Claim?

A claim like this gets decided in a set order, and knowing the order tells you what is being worked out about you while you are still recovering. Personal injury and wrongful death law is all we do, and pedestrian claims in Fort Wayne and the rest of Allen County sit inside our wider Fort Wayne personal injury practice.

1. What the driver owed you. Indiana’s due care rule sits above the right-of-way rules, so a driver owed you care whether or not you were inside a crosswalk. Where you were crossing still matters too, and the section that decides it is set out further down, with the conditions it carries.
2. How long you have. The lawsuit deadline is two years, and it runs from when the claim arises rather than from any date you choose. If a city, county or state body may be involved, though, a much shorter notice deadline comes first, and it is set out below.
3. How much of the blame lands on you. In a claim against another driver, Indiana reduces what you recover by your own share of fault. The full rule, including the situation where it does not apply at all, is set out further down.

Not one of those three is peculiar to this city; they are Indiana law, and they read the same in every county. What is particular to Fort Wayne is how two of its corridors ranked on the state’s own road risk assessment, and that is the last part of this page.

Which credentials matter on a Fort Wayne pedestrian claim

Two are worth naming here. Tom Blackburn, a founding partner, has practiced personal injury law since 1985. David A. Singleton is a member of the Allen County Bar Association, the county Fort Wayne sits in, and he handles our motion practice and oral arguments in the trial and appellate courts. A Free Confidential Consultation is where a pedestrian claim starts with us.

What Did the Driver Owe You Under Indiana Law?

Whatever the right-of-way rules say, IC 9-21-8-37 requires every driver to use due care to avoid colliding with a pedestrian or a person propelling a human powered vehicle, giving an audible signal when necessary. The same section requires a driver to exercise proper caution upon observing a child or an obviously confused, incapacitated, or intoxicated person. This duty applies even where the pedestrian was outside a crosswalk. Our explainer on whether pedestrians have the right of way in Indiana goes through the crossing rules themselves.

The same article of the code puts a second set of requirements on how a driver moves the vehicle. Under IC 9-21-8-24, slowing down or stopping a vehicle, turning it from a direct course, and changing lanes are each only lawful when the movement can be made with reasonable safety, and each must be signaled first — with an appropriate stop or turn signal, and with a clearly audible horn signal if any pedestrian may be affected by the movement. For a pedestrian struck by a turning or merging vehicle, that means there are two separate things to establish about the driver: whether the movement could be made with reasonable safety, and whether it was signaled.

When the driver has to yield to you at a crosswalk

Where a crossing has no traffic control signal in place, or the signal is not in operation, a driver must yield the right of way, slowing down or stopping if necessary to yield, to a pedestrian crossing the roadway within a crosswalk when the pedestrian is on the half of the roadway the vehicle is traveling on, or is approaching closely from the other half. That rule is IC 9-21-8-36, and it turns on what counts as a crosswalk. “Crosswalk” is not limited to painted lines: at an intersection it also covers the unmarked area between the sidewalk lines on opposite sides of the road. That definition is IC 9-13-2-40, and it matters here: if you were crossing at an intersection with no paint on it, you were very likely in a crosswalk.

Those conditions are the whole of this rule. It is for crossings where signals are absent or not operating; where a signal is working, the signal sections govern instead. The statute carries its own exceptions for a crossing where a pedestrian tunnel or overhead crossing has been provided, and for a pedestrian hybrid beacon displaying no indication. So it is not a general rule that drivers must always yield to pedestrians in crosswalks, and it is not the same as the due-care duty above, which applies whatever the right-of-way rules say.

How long you have to bring a Fort Wayne pedestrian claim

Indiana gives you two years from when your claim arises to file an injury lawsuit, under IC 34-11-2-4. For most crash injuries that means two years from the day of the crash. The statute’s own measure is two years “after the cause of action accrues”, so where accrual might have come later than the collision, the date is one to check with a lawyer rather than count off a calendar.

The shorter deadline if a government body may be involved

Two sections set those notice deadlines, IC 34-13-3-8(a) for a political subdivision and IC 34-13-3-6(a) for the state, and IC 34-13-3-12 sets the form the notice has to take.

The two years is not the first deadline where a government defendant is involved. Where an injury claim is a tort claim against a governmental defendant under Indiana’s Tort Claims Act, notice comes first: a claim against a political subdivision (a county, township, city, town, school corporation, state educational institution, city or county hospital, or another entity in the definition at IC 34-6-2.1-155) is barred unless notice is filed with its governing body (and, in the cases the statute specifies, with the Indiana political subdivision risk management commission) within 180 days after the loss occurs, and a claim against the state is barred unless notice is filed with the attorney general or the state agency involved within 270 days after the loss occurs. The notice must be in writing and delivered in person or by registered or certified mail.

Both windows are far shorter than the two-year lawsuit deadline, and the Act has narrow exceptions of its own — so if any government body may be involved, speak to a lawyer well before the notice window closes, and do not assume a missed window has ended the claim without asking.

For someone struck on foot that is not a remote possibility: a city or county street department, a transit or school bus, a police or public works vehicle, or the authority responsible for the crossing can each put a claim inside the Act. Whether a particular claim falls under it is a question to put to a lawyer quickly, because the notice window is measured from when the loss occurs, not from when anyone works out who is responsible.

Who brings the claim when a pedestrian is killed

It turns on whether the person who died was a child as Indiana defines one, and that definition is narrower than the ordinary sense of the word. Under IC 34-23-2-1, a child is an unmarried individual without dependents who was either less than twenty years of age, or less than twenty-three and enrolled in a postsecondary educational institution or in a career and technical education school or program that is not a postsecondary educational program. The term also includes a fetus that has attained viability. The conditions stack, so a married seventeen year-old is not a child under that section, while an unmarried twenty-one year-old still enrolled in college is.

Where the person who died was not a child as Indiana defines one, IC 34-23-1-1 has the wrongful death lawsuit brought by the personal representative of the person who died, and that action has to be filed within two years. Where the person who died was a child as Indiana defines one, IC 34-23-2-1 sets out who may bring the claim: the action may be maintained by the father and mother jointly, or by either of them if they name the other parent as a codefendant to answer as to his or her interest; or, after a divorce or dissolution of marriage, by the person to whom custody of the child was awarded; or by a guardian, for a protected person. If the person who was awarded custody has since died, a personal representative is appointed to maintain the action. A child’s claim is not one to leave sitting: Indiana’s two-year injury deadline is the one to work to, so ask a lawyer about your own dates rather than assuming you have longer. And if a government body may be involved, the Tort Claims Act notice window above closes sooner still.

What your own share of the fault does to the claim

Three sections of Indiana’s comparative fault chapter decide that: IC 34-51-2-2, which sets where the chapter applies, together with IC 34-51-2-5 and IC 34-51-2-6. Indiana compares fault in a claim against another driver, but not in a tort claim against a governmental entity or a public employee under Indiana’s Tort Claims Act, where the comparative fault chapter does not apply at all. Where it does apply, your own share of fault reduces what you recover, and only a share greater than everyone else’s combined bars the claim entirely. That is the rule the driver’s insurer is working to when it starts putting a share of the blame on you: being partly at fault changes what a claim is worth rather than automatically ending it. The same chapter runs through every Fort Wayne car accident claim, not only the ones where someone was on foot.

Which Fort Wayne Roads Has Indiana Flagged as High-Risk?

INDOT’s Vulnerable Road User Safety Assessment (2023), prepared by Cambridge Systematics, scored Indiana’s road segments and intersections for the risk they pose to vulnerable road users, a group that includes people walking and people cycling, using crash data from 2018 to 2022. It ranked S Clinton St. between E Baker St. and E Superior St. first, and E Jefferson Blvd between S Clinton St. and S Hanna St. second, on its list of high-risk urban corridors. Those are the top two of only four urban Tier-1 corridors it ranked in the whole state, and two Fort Wayne intersections are on its urban Tier-1 intersection list as well.

The numbers behind that are narrow. S Clinton St. carried a total VRU score of 92 out of 100 and E Jefferson Blvd 77. A score like that is built 75% on the severity of the 2018 to 2022 crashes and 25% on demographic and equity factors, so it is not a crash count. The two Fort Wayne intersections, E Jefferson Blvd & Lafayette St. and E Jefferson Blvd & S Clinton St., both scored 47, and they are two of the six urban Tier-1 intersections in the state.

The assessment analyzed all 7,803 vulnerable-road-user crashes in Indiana between 2018 and 2022. That set is wider than pedestrians and cyclists: it takes in people on personal conveyances, scooter riders, people using wheelchairs and other users of non-motorized modes. It scores risk to people walking and people cycling together in one combined score rather than as separate rankings, and we handle Fort Wayne bicycle accident claims as well.

What a VRU score does and does not mean

What the score is not is a count of crashes, and the assessment is not a ranking of dangerous roads: it ranks within Tier 1 of its own urban list, and its urban and rural lists use different weightings and different breakpoints, so no combined statewide ranking exists. A corridor scores high because of how badly the collisions there ended and who is exposed to them, not simply how many there were.

What that means for your claim is limited but real. The score is a planning tool for targeting safety investment, not evidence about any driver, any road authority or any single crash, and it decides nothing about your case. Where it earns its place is context: if you were struck on one of these corridors, say so early, because where a collision happened shapes what evidence is worth gathering while it still exists.

What the Allen County and statewide crash figures show

Indiana County Profiles 2023 records 194 pedestrians involved in Allen County collisions in 2023, in its table of individuals in collisions by injury severity at printed page 18: 11 were killed and 182 suffered non-fatal injuries, which leaves 193 of the 194 killed or injured. Those are pedestrians in collisions that produced at least one recorded injury: the table excludes collisions that caused property damage only. Statewide, Indiana Crash Facts 2024 reports 1,613 pedestrians involved in Indiana collisions in 2024, of whom 111 were killed, and of the 1,613, all but 106 were hurt or killed. Of those injuries, 658 fell in the report’s lowest band, possible injury. The killed or injured and not attributed totals on this page are addition from these reports’ own published columns, not separately published figures.

The same 2024 report records, for each pedestrian action, the share of the pedestrians involved to whom the collision was attributed: of the 1,613 pedestrians involved in Indiana collisions in 2024, about two-thirds (1,082 of them) were not the party the collision was attributed to; though among those crossing away from an intersection, most were: 190 of 317. That field is recorded by the reporting officer in the state’s ARIES system. It is not a legal finding of fault. What that means for you is narrow but useful: it is a starting point the driver’s insurer will quote back at you, not a decision about your claim, and what a share of the blame actually does to a claim is set out in the comparative fault section above.

Frequently Asked Questions About Fort Wayne Pedestrian Accident Claims

These are the questions we are asked most often about being struck on foot in Fort Wayne.

Talk to a Fort Wayne Pedestrian Accident Lawyer

A free confidential consultation is the place to start: Blackburn Romey will look at what happened and give you a straight answer about whether there is a claim worth bringing. We handle pedestrian injury and wrongful death claims in Fort Wayne and across the rest of Allen County, and the law on this page is the law we would be working with. Call 833-366-6595 or contact us. If any deadline may be close to running, say so when you get in touch, and bring whatever you already have: the crash report number, the name of the driver’s insurer, and the photographs anyone took at the scene.