You were crossing a street in Lafayette, Indiana, and a vehicle came out of nowhere. Now you are working out how badly you are hurt, an adjuster for the driver’s insurer may already have called, and someone has told you the collision was your own fault because you were not in a crosswalk. That last part is not how Indiana law works. A pedestrian who was outside a crosswalk can still bring a claim, and the driver’s duty to you does not switch off because of where you stepped into the road.
Personal injury and wrongful death are all we do. Pedestrian claims in Lafayette and the rest of Tippecanoe County sit inside that practice, alongside the Lafayette car accident work that arises from the same streets, and they turn on a question the insurer starts arguing from the first phone call: how much of the fault belongs to the person who was on foot.
Every percentage point of fault an insurer can move onto you reduces what it pays, so the fault split is the case rather than a preliminary to it. Arguing it is motion and courtroom work, and that is the work David A. Singleton does here: he handles our motion practice and oral arguments in the trial and appellate courts, and he is admitted before all Indiana state courts.
The next step on offer is a free confidential consultation. We will look at what happened and give you a straight answer about whether there is a claim worth bringing. Our Lafayette personal injury practice covers the other injuries and losses that can follow from the same collision.
Indiana puts a duty on the driver that does not depend on who had the right of way. Under IC 9-21-8-37, whatever the right-of-way rules say, every driver must use due care to avoid colliding with a pedestrian or a person propelling a human powered vehicle, giving an audible signal when necessary, and must 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.
For you, that is the difference between a claim and no claim. If the driver was looking away, misjudged the gap, or simply did not slow when a person was in front of the vehicle, the due-care duty was breached whether or not you were between the painted lines. Our statewide page for pedestrians hit by cars covers how these rules run across the rest of Indiana.
There is also a specific rule for a driver at a yield sign. Under IC 9-21-8-33, a driver approaching one must slow to a speed reasonable for the existing conditions, or stop if necessary, and must yield the right of way to a pedestrian legally crossing the roadway, as well as to a vehicle in the intersection or approaching on another highway so closely as to present an immediate hazard. And where a driver went past a yield sign without stopping and then hit a pedestrian in a crosswalk, Indiana law treats the collision itself as prima facie evidence that the driver failed to yield. So on that one question, the collision does evidential work for you rather than being something you have to build from nothing.
And where a crossing carries no traffic control signal, or the signal is not in operation, the yield duty sits on the driver. Under IC 9-21-8-36, a driver in that situation 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.
Two things about that rule matter before anyone relies on it. First, it is the rule for crossings where signals are absent or not operating; where a signal is working, the signal sections govern instead. The statute also carries its own exceptions for a crossing where a pedestrian tunnel or overhead pedestrian 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. Second, “crosswalk” is not limited to painted lines. Under IC 9-13-2-40 it also covers, at an intersection, the unmarked area between the sidewalk lines on opposite sides of the road. If you were crossing at an intersection with no paint on the road, you were very likely in a crosswalk after all.
The driver’s duty also reaches the movements that put a vehicle into a pedestrian’s path. 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 a clearly audible horn signal if any pedestrian may be affected by the movement, and with an appropriate stop or turn signal.
The horn requirement is the part most people have never heard of, and it matters if you were hit by a vehicle that turned across your path or pulled out of a line of traffic without warning. Whether the driver signaled at all, and whether the movement could be made with reasonable safety in the first place, are things other people at the scene may have seen. If anyone stopped to help you, their name is worth writing down.
You can still have a claim. Indiana does place duties on pedestrians, and crossing away from a crosswalk can breach one of them, but a breach reduces a claim rather than ending it.
What Indiana asks of you on foot. Pedestrians have duties too. Crossing away from any crosswalk, marked or unmarked at an intersection, means yielding to traffic on the road, under IC 9-21-17-7, and where you cross between two adjacent intersections that both have traffic signals in operation, crossing is only allowed in a marked crosswalk, under IC 9-21-17-9. Under IC 9-21-17-5, a pedestrian may not suddenly leave a curb or other place of safety and walk or run into the path of a vehicle that is close enough to be an immediate hazard.
What Indiana asks of the driver at the same moment. All of it, still. The due-care duty in IC 9-21-8-37 applies even where the pedestrian was outside a crosswalk, so a driver who was not watching the road does not acquire a defense because you crossed mid-block.
But breaking any of those rules does not end a claim. 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.
The driver’s separate duty of due care still applies. So the percentage an insurer puts on you is a position to be answered, not a finding, and answering it is most of the work in a pedestrian case. Our explainer on whether pedestrians have the right of way in Indiana sets out how the two sets of rules meet.
No. An infraction is a civil penalty on its own track, and the two chapters that govern pedestrian collisions are not even graded the same way. A driver who breaks the due-care duty in IC 9-21-8-37 or the yield-sign duty in IC 9-21-8-33 and injures someone commits a Class A infraction, under IC 9-21-8-49. A breach of the separate pedestrian signal and crosswalk chapter, IC 9-21-17, is a Class C infraction with no bodily injury upgrade, under IC 9-21-17-24. Either way, the infraction is a civil penalty separate from your injury claim, which runs on negligence.
What that means for you is straightforward. A citation written at the scene, to the driver or to you, is not the last word on the claim, and a ticket for crossing outside a crosswalk carries no injury upgrade whatever your injuries were. How fault is divided is settled under the comparative fault rules described above, not by what the officer wrote on the ticket.
Often enough that the county records them every year. *Indiana County Profiles 2023* records 118 pedestrians involved in Tippecanoe County collisions in 2023. Read that figure for what it is: the report’s table excludes people in property damage only collisions, so the 118 are pedestrians in collisions that produced at least one recorded injury, not every pedestrian struck in the county. Five of the 118 were killed and 112 suffered non-fatal injuries, which is 117 killed or injured on our own arithmetic rather than as a published total. There is no separate published pedestrian breakdown for the city of Lafayette, so the county figure is the closest published measure of what happens here, and it is 2023 data.
Statewide, the newest published figures are for 2024. *Indiana Crash Facts 2024* records 1,613 pedestrians involved in Indiana collisions in 2024, of whom all but 106 were hurt or killed; 111 of them were killed.
The same report records, for each pedestrian involved, whether the reporting officer attributed the collision to that pedestrian. Most of the time the officer did not link the collision to the pedestrian: 1,082 of the 1,613 pedestrians involved in Indiana collisions in 2024, about two-thirds of them. Where a pedestrian was crossing away from an intersection the split ran the other way, and 190 of those 317 were linked to the collision. That entry is a crash report field recorded in the state’s ARIES system and not a legal finding of fault, so it settles nothing about your own claim.
Five of those 118 Tippecanoe County pedestrians did not survive 2023 (*Indiana County Profiles 2023*, printed p.327), and a fatal case runs on its own rules about who may sue. Deadlines come first, and the two-year one is not always the first deadline you face. A pedestrian is struck on a street, and streets and crossings are things cities and counties are responsible for, so a road authority, a municipal vehicle or another government body can end up in the claim, and that changes the calendar completely.
Where a government body may be involved, notice comes first. Where an injury claim is a tort claim against a governmental defendant under Indiana’s Tort Claims Act, a claim against a political subdivision 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, under IC 34-13-3-8. A political subdivision here means 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. 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, under IC 34-13-3-6.
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.
The general lawsuit deadline sits behind the notice window. IC 34-11-2-4 gives you two years from when your claim arises to file an injury lawsuit, and for most crash injuries that means two years from the day of the crash.
That sentence carries more than it looks like it does. It is a deadline for filing a lawsuit rather than for making a claim, and those are not the same step. And it runs from when the cause of action arises rather than from the crash as an automatic matter; for most crash injuries those are the same day, but not in every case. So the useful thing to do with a deadline is to have someone check it against your own facts, rather than counting two years forward and assuming.
Where the person who died was not a child as Indiana defines one: the wrongful death lawsuit is brought by the personal representative of the person who died, and that action has to be filed within two years, under IC 34-23-1-1.
A child’s case usually comes down to the parents, together, with the statute naming the other family situations one at a time.
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 co-defendant 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.
Who counts as a child here is not what most people would guess, so it is worth checking against your own family rather than assuming. Someone unmarried and without dependents who was under twenty counts. So does someone unmarried and without dependents who was under twenty-three, if they were enrolled in a post-secondary educational institution, or in a career and technical education school or program that is not a post-secondary educational program. And the definition expressly includes a fetus that has attained viability, so a parent whose unborn child died in a pedestrian collision is inside this section rather than outside it. 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.
These are the questions that come up once a reader understands the rules above, and they are the ones an adjuster is least likely to volunteer an answer to. Each answer stays short; the sections above carry the detail and the statutes behind it.
It matters to the yield duty, not to whether you have a claim. Crossing away from a crosswalk, marked or unmarked at an intersection, meant you had to yield to traffic on the road. The driver’s due care duty applied at that same spot, and it does not depend on where you crossed.
Not on its own. The pedestrian duty is narrower than it sounds: it forbids suddenly leaving a curb or other place of safety and walking or running into the path of a vehicle that is close enough to be an immediate hazard. A crossing begun when the nearest vehicle was not that close does not breach it.
An adjuster’s percentage is a negotiating position, not a legal finding. Fault is compared under the rules set out above. Nor does the crash report decide it: whether the officer attributed the collision to the pedestrian is a field in the state’s ARIES system, recorded at the scene, not a determination of liability.
Due care, and more of it in some situations. IC 9-21-8-37 requires a driver to exercise proper caution upon observing a child or an obviously confused, incapacitated, or intoxicated person. So a driver who saw a child in the roadway owed more than the ordinary standard of attention, and owed it regardless of where that child was crossing.
Two years is the general deadline, not always the first one. Indiana gives you two years from when your claim arises to file an injury lawsuit. But where a city, county or other government body may be in the claim, a Tort Claims Act notice comes first: 180 days for a political subdivision, 270 days for the state.
That depends on whether the person who died was a child as Indiana defines one. Where they were not, the personal representative brings the wrongful death action, within two years. Where they were, IC 34-23-2-1 sets out a different list, above. And where a government body may be involved, notice comes first: 180 or 270 days, not two years.
If you were struck by a vehicle while walking in Lafayette or anywhere in Tippecanoe County, the place to start is a free confidential consultation. Personal injury and wrongful death are all we do, and the argument over the fault split is what a pedestrian case is largely made of.
Call 833-366-6595 or contact us to arrange it. Bring whatever you already have: the crash report number, the names of anyone who stopped, photographs of the street. If any deadline is anywhere close, say so when you get in touch, and say if a city or county vehicle, or a road a government body is responsible for, may have been part of what happened. The notice window in that situation is much shorter than two years.
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