Merrillville Pedestrian Accident Lawyer

If a driver struck you on foot in Merrillville, or you are handling this for someone in your family, four questions decide where a claim goes: what the driver owed you, what the crash report records about the collision, how your own conduct is weighed, and how long you have to act. This page answers each of them, and it starts from the state’s own figures. In 2023, 223 pedestrians were caught up in Lake County collisions that produced at least one recorded injury, and 220 of them were killed or hurt, a total this page reaches by adding the fatal and non-fatal columns of the Indiana County Profiles 2023 county page at printed page 190. Blackburn Romey handles pedestrian claims throughout Indiana, including Merrillville and the rest of Lake County.

How Blackburn Romey Handles a Merrillville Pedestrian Injury Claim

Personal injury and wrongful death law is all we do, so a Merrillville pedestrian claim is core work here rather than a sideline. Tom Blackburn, a founding partner, has practiced personal injury law since 1985, and that is the depth of injury practice standing behind work like this. What matters is not where an office sits, but the county a claim belongs to. Frank Wolferd is a member of the Lake County Bar Association — Lake County being where a Merrillville claim belongs.

A pedestrian claim runs against the driver’s insurer in the same way as any other crash claim, which is why it sits next to our Merrillville car accident attorney page. What differs is the separate set of duties Indiana writes for drivers around people on foot, set out below. Where a loss reaches wider than the crash itself, our Merrillville personal injury lawyer page is the broader entry point. What is on offer at this stage is a free fonfidential consultation, and that is where a pedestrian claim starts.

How Often Are Pedestrians Involved in Lake County Crashes?

In 2023, 223 pedestrians were caught up in Lake County collisions that produced at least one recorded injury. Of those, 16 were killed and 204 suffered non-fatal injuries, which leaves 220 of the 223 killed or injured. That count comes from the Indiana County Profiles 2023, whose table leaves out people in property damage only collisions, so it is not a count of every pedestrian struck in the county. That report is the newest published county breakout by person type, and the figures cover Lake County as a whole. No official source publishes a pedestrian breakdown for Merrillville alone, so the county is the unit these figures come in, and this page does not build a smaller one out of them. What changes the conversation for a reader weighing up a claim is not the size of the county number. It is what the state records alongside it.

What the State Records About Who a Collision Is Attributed To

Statewide, the state’s own table reframes the conversation an insurer starts. Indiana Crash Facts 2024 records 1,613 pedestrians involved in Indiana collisions in 2024, and 111 of them were killed. Of those 1,613 pedestrians, all but 106 were hurt or killed. The same 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.

Before that table, the discussion of a pedestrian claim tends to open with the pedestrian’s conduct. After it, the statewide baseline for 2024 is that most pedestrians involved in these collisions were not the party the collision was attributed to. That two-thirds figure is a statewide one, not a Lake County one. “Attributable to pedestrian” also reflects what the reporting officer recorded in the state’s ARIES system as the primary factor in the collision. It is not a legal finding of fault. What decides how a share of fault affects a recovery is Indiana’s comparative fault chapter.

How a Share of Fault Affects What You Recover

Indiana compares fault in a claim against another driver. It does not compare fault in a tort claim against a governmental entity or a public employee under Indiana’s Tort Claims Act, where IC 34-51-2-2 means the comparative fault chapter does not apply at all. Where it does apply, under IC 34-51-2-5 your own share of fault reduces what you recover, and under IC 34-51-2-6 only a share greater than everyone else’s combined bars the claim entirely. That is a proportion, not a switch. A share of fault reduces a recovery instead of ending it, until it passes the point IC 34-51-2-6 describes.

What Indiana Law Requires of Drivers Around Pedestrians

Whatever the right-of-way rules say, IC 9-21-8-37 requires every driver to use due care to avoid hitting a pedestrian, giving an audible signal when necessary. The same section requires proper caution once a driver sees a child, or someone who is obviously confused, incapacitated or intoxicated. This duty applies even where the pedestrian was outside a crosswalk. Our explainer on whether pedestrians have the right of way in Indiana sets out how those right-of-way rules fit together.

A second set of duties in IC 9-21-8-24 governs how a driver moves the vehicle. Slowing down or stopping a vehicle, turning it from a direct course on a highway, and changing lanes are each only lawful when the movement can be made with reasonable safety. Each must also 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. Both sections sit on the driver. What they measure is the driver’s movement in the moments before impact: braking, turning, changing lanes. For a claim, that is where the driver’s own conduct is tested: a movement made without reasonable safety, or without the signal the section requires, is the kind of breach the insurer has to answer for.

Who Has the Right of Way at a Merrillville Crosswalk?

The section that actually allocates right of way at a crossing is IC 9-21-8-36, and its conditions matter as much as the duty. 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. “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, so someone crossing at an intersection with no paint on it was very likely in a crosswalk.

This is not a general rule that drivers must always yield to pedestrians in crosswalks. It is for crossings where a signal is absent or not operating, and 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. Where a signal is operating, the signal sections govern instead. For a claim that means the crossing’s own layout, and whether its signal was working, decide which rule the insurer has to argue under.

How Long Do You Have to File in Indiana?

IC 34-11-2-4 gives you two years from when your claim arises to file an injury lawsuit. For most crash injuries that means two years from the day of the crash. Where the claim may have arisen later than the crash itself, the date is one to put to a lawyer rather than work out from a calendar. A wrong reading of it cannot be corrected afterwards.

Two years is not the first deadline in every pedestrian case. Where a government body may be involved, such as a city or county vehicle, a transit bus, or the authority responsible for the crossing itself, the Indiana Tort Claims Act puts a notice requirement ahead of the lawsuit.

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 under IC 34-13-3-8 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. A claim against the state is barred under IC 34-13-3-6 unless notice is filed with the attorney general or the state agency involved within 270 days after the loss occurs. Under IC 34-13-3-12 that 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.

Who Can Bring a Claim if a Pedestrian Is Killed?

Which route applies turns on who died. Where the person who died was not a child as Indiana defines one, under IC 34-23-1-1 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. If a government body may be involved, the Tort Claims Act notice window above closes long before that two years does.

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. It may also be maintained, 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.

“Child” in that section is three cumulative conditions. The person must be unmarried, and without dependents, and either under twenty, or under twenty-three and enrolled in a postsecondary institution or a career or technical program that is not a postsecondary program. A married 17-year-old is not a “child” on that test; a 21-year-old student is. The section’s definition also includes a fetus that has attained viability. A child’s claim is not one to leave sitting. Indiana’s two-year injury deadline is the one to work to, and where a government body may be involved a Tort Claims Act notice is due long before it, so ask a lawyer about your own dates rather than assuming you have longer.

Frequently Asked Questions About Merrillville Pedestrian Accident Claims

These are the questions that decide most pedestrian claims, answered from Indiana’s statutes and the state’s published crash data.

Talk to a Merrillville 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 claims in Merrillville and across Lake County, against the driver’s insurer. The ground we work from is the duties Indiana puts on drivers, not an insurer’s account of the pedestrian. Call 833-366-6595, or contact us if a form suits you better. With a two-year deadline running from when the claim arises, and a much shorter notice window where a government body may be involved, that conversation is worth having sooner rather than later.