Boynton Beach · Palm Beach County

Boynton Beach Pedestrian and Bicycle Lawyer

You had the walk signal and a car came anyway, and now there are broken bones, weeks in a bed and bills arriving for both. We can take it from here. Call 833-370-8692 for a free consultation. You pay us nothing unless we win. Our Boynton Beach personal injury lawyers have taken these cases across Palm Beach County since 1993.

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$3,850,000 Recovered for a pedestrian struck by a vehicle.

Your own UM Can pay in a hit and run, even on foot.

Palm Beach County Our Boynton Beach office takes these claims anywhere in the county.

In Palm Beach County

Pedestrian and Bicycle claims in Boynton Beach

The driver told the officer you stepped out, and if they left the scene there may be nobody to bill at all. Meanwhile you are working out how to cover the first surgery, how long you will be off work, and who pays if that driver is never found. Answering those three is our job, and it starts the day you call.

Much of what we see in Boynton Beach never happens at a marked intersection. People are hit in plaza parking lots along Congress Avenue and Federal Highway, or crossing mid-block to reach a bus stop when the nearest signal is a quarter of a mile away. A parking lot strike is a claim on private property rather than on the roadway, and that changes both who is responsible and what evidence exists.

Short answer

A great deal of what happens in Boynton Beach never happens on a road: people are struck in plaza lots and while crossing mid-block to reach a bus stop. That changes who is responsible and what evidence exists, because lot cameras belong to the property. Cases here are usually heard at the South County Courthouse in Delray Beach.

What to do after a pedestrian and bicycle in Boynton Beach

Take the ambulance. People struck while walking get up, apologize and go home more often than any other group we see, and it is the decision that costs them most. A vehicle strike puts force through the body in three separate impacts, and internal injuries and bleeding on the brain are frequently found hours later on imaging rather than at the roadside. A same-day record is also the clearest evidence that the injuries came from the collision.
Get witness names, because yours is the account nobody hears. The person on foot is being loaded into an ambulance while the driver is giving the officer the only version of events in the file. If you cannot do it, ask whoever is with you to take names and numbers from anybody standing there. A single independent witness is frequently what turns a report that says you stepped out into a claim.
Keep the clothes and everything you were carrying. Do not wash them and do not throw them out. What you were wearing answers the argument that you were invisible, and the damage to a bag, a phone or a stroller records the direction of force. It is evidence that costs nothing to keep and cannot be recreated once it is gone.
Write down what you remember the same day. Where you were standing, which signal you had, which direction the vehicle came from, what the driver said. Do it while it is fresh, in your own words, on paper or on a phone. A concussion takes detail out of a memory over the following week and the account you give in month three will be less complete than the one you could have written on day one.
Give no recorded statement to the driver’s insurer. The call is friendly and the questions are about whether you looked, what you were wearing and whether you were on your phone. You are under no obligation to be recorded by the other side, and answers given by somebody on pain medication get quoted back months later as though they were considered testimony.

Where these happen in Boynton Beach

South Palm Beach County is arranged around plazas and managed communities rather than around a street grid, and the people walking in it are older on average than anywhere else on this list. Both facts change these cases.

Plaza parking lots

The lots along Congress Avenue and Federal Highway, which is private property rather than roadway and is a different claim entirely.
- Backing collisions, which injure older adults and children out of all proportion to how minor they look
- Striping, signage, walkway placement and lighting controlled by the property owner
- Lot cameras, which are the property’s, are usually the only footage, and cycle within weeks
- A property owner who may carry a share alongside the driver, with separate insurance
The walk to a bus stop

Stops placed along Congress Avenue and Federal Highway where the nearest signal is a quarter of a mile away, which decides where people cross.
- Stop placement relative to the nearest crossing, which is a documented decision by an agency
- Crossing in front of or behind a stopped bus, where sight lines close for everybody at once
- Transit vehicle cameras and scheduling records, held by the agency
- A claim involving a public body cannot be filed until written notice has been given and answered
Managed communities and their entrances

The 55 and over communities across Boynton, Delray and Lake Worth, where a lot of walking happens inside the gates.
- Low-speed vehicles and golf carts on community roads, which are vehicles for these purposes and carry their own coverage questions
- Community roads, walkways and lighting maintained by an association rather than by the city
- Association minutes and work orders showing a hazard reported before somebody was hurt
- Entrances where vehicles turn in across a walkway used by residents daily
The beach crossings

A1A through Ocean Ridge and Gulf Stream, where people cross between parking and sand at whatever point they are standing.
- Long distances between marked crossings on a road with no shoulder to speak of
- Drivers slowing and turning into beach access without checking the crossing they are turning across
- Cyclists and runners sharing the same narrow corridor
- Weekend traffic including a high proportion of drivers unfamiliar with the road

What causes them

Signals whose crossing interval is too short for an older person or anybody using a cane or a walker
Long distances between signals on wide roads, which makes crossing mid-block the only realistic option
Streetlights out for weeks on a road people walk along after dark
Roads built with no sidewalk at all, which puts people on the shoulder or in the lane
Bus stops placed where there is no crossing within a reasonable distance

The injuries we see, and what each one turns on

Spine and spinal cord

Herniations, fractures and cord injuries from the impact and from the landing. The standard defense is age, since nearly every adult spine shows wear on imaging, and the argument is that the collision found it rather than caused it. A clear picture of function before and after is what answers it.

Internal injuries

Organ damage and internal bleeding, some of it not apparent at the roadside and found only on imaging hours later. It is the single strongest reason to accept transport rather than walk away, and it is the injury people who declined the ambulance are most often admitted with the following morning.

Catastrophic injury and death

Amputation, permanent cognitive injury and paralysis turn a claim into a life care case: equipment, home modification, attendant care and decades of work somebody will not do. Where somebody is killed, Florida decides by statute who in the family may recover and for what, and the claim is brought by a personal representative of the estate rather than by relatives individually.

What Florida law requires you to prove

Who had to yield, and what happens outside a crosswalk

Florida sets out the rights and duties of people on foot in Fla. Stat. § 316.130. Drivers have to yield to a pedestrian lawfully in a crosswalk, and a person crossing outside one has to yield to vehicles. The part that gets left out of the conversation is in the same statute: every driver has a duty to exercise due care to avoid colliding with any pedestrian, whether or not that person was where they should have been.

Being outside a crosswalk is not the end of a claim

It affects how the blame is divided rather than whether a claim exists. Under Fla. Stat. § 768.81 a recovery is reduced by the injured person’s share of responsibility, and a person found more than 50 percent responsible recovers nothing. Driver speed, sight lines, lighting and how far the nearest signal actually was all bear on that split, and all of them are documentable. Most Florida negligence claims arising on or after March 24, 2023 carry a two-year deadline under Fla. Stat. § 95.11.

When the road itself is part of the problem

Some of these collisions happen because of where a crossing was put, how long the signal gave people to use it, or a light that had been out for a month. Where a city, a county or a transit agency is responsible for that, the claim runs on a different track: Florida requires written notice of the claim to be presented to the agency, and in most cases to the Department of Financial Services, before any suit can be filed at all, and the agency then has months to respond. Recovery is also capped. Neither the notice nor the wait can be skipped, so identifying a public defendant late can leave no time to complete a step that is a precondition of suing.

The full statutory detail, and the parts that differ by claim type, sit on our statewide pedestrian and bicycle page rather than being restated in every market.

How we prove it in Palm Beach County

Most of what decides a case here is recorded by a private property or an association rather than by a public authority, which changes who has to be asked and how quickly.

What we go after, and when

Plaza, storefront and community entrance cameras, which are the most useful footage in this area and overwrite within weeks
The lot’s striping, signage, lighting and walkway layout, photographed before anything is repainted or replaced
The damage on the vehicle, its location and its height, which indicates speed and body position
The clothing and everything being carried, kept unwashed, which answers the visibility argument
Association minutes, work orders and maintenance records on a community property
Transit stop placement, vehicle camera footage and scheduling records where a bus stop is part of the story
Prior incidents at the same lot or the same entrance, which is what makes a layout foreseeable rather than unlucky
The crash report and the officer’s underlying notes, bearing in mind that a collision on private property is documented differently from one on a road

Where an older person was struck, the medical work matters as much as the evidence work. A pelvic or hip fracture at 78 is not the same injury it is at 40, and the year that follows frequently includes a loss of independence that no invoice records.

A setting a pedestrian and bicycle claim in Boynton Beach typically arises from

Who would handle your case

Being hurt in Boynton Beach is hard enough without working out the legal side on your own. The trial lawyers below have handled pedestrian and bicycle claims across Florida since 1993, and one of them will take yours from the first call to the last check. They will tell you what your case is worth and why, and they will be straight with you about the parts that are hard.

How insurance companies handle these claims

A pedestrian file starts with the driver’s account already in it, and the questions that follow are aimed at the share of fault rather than at whether you were hurt.

You were looking at your phone: Asserted far more often than it is established. Where it is genuinely in issue the phone record answers it, and the same record answers the same question about the driver, which is the part that tends not to get raised. We can get both sides of that.
An early offer, arriving before anybody knows the injury: It is priced on the bills that exist in the first month and it comes with a release that cannot be reopened. In a practice where a second operation is common and a brain injury frequently declares itself weeks later, that timing is the point. Nothing is signed until the treating doctors have said where this settles.
There is nobody to claim against, because the driver left: A driver who leaves cannot be sued, but the claim does not necessarily die with them. Uninsured motorist coverage on your own auto policy, or on a resident relative’s, commonly responds to a hit and run involving somebody on foot. Separately, your own PIP follows you as a person rather than only your car, so the policy on a vehicle parked at home can pay the first medical bills after you were struck while walking. Almost nobody thinks to check, and it is the cheapest thing in the case to check.

What a claim can include

Scarring and disfigurement

A separate head of loss after grafting or a degloving injury. Photograph the healing as it happens, because a record of what it looked like at three weeks does not exist unless somebody made it.

Life care costs after a catastrophic injury

Equipment, home modification, attendant care and the replacement schedule for all of it, set out by a professional so that it is a number rather than an argument.

What a family may recover after a death

Funeral and medical expenses, lost support and services, and the losses the statute assigns to particular survivors. Who may claim is decided by statute rather than by agreement within a family.

What we have recovered

Verified matters this firm has handled on pedestrian and bicycle claims. Figures are gross recoveries, before attorney fees, costs and medical liens come out of them.

$3.85 millionPedestrian accident

Settlement

Every verdict and settlement we publish, with the press coverage for the ones that were reported. No result predicts another case: every claim turns on its own facts, its own evidence and the insurance actually available.

Another setting a pedestrian and bicycle claim in Boynton Beach arises from

Why Wolf & Pravato in Boynton Beach

A case arising in Boynton Beach is normally heard at the South County Courthouse in Delray Beach rather than downtown West Palm Beach, and the firm’s office on East Gateway Boulevard is a short drive from it. The firm has recovered $3,850,000 for a pedestrian struck by a vehicle, and for somebody recovering from that kind of injury a local office is a practical difference rather than a marketing one.

Fewer than one percent of Florida lawyers are Board Certified in Civil Trial law: 861 of them, against a Bar membership over 109,000. Richard Pravato is one, and has been since 2004. Carriers price a claim partly on who is holding it, which is the practical reason that matters to somebody deciding who to call.

A consultation costs nothing, and neither does the case unless we recover money for you. Where we do not believe a claim is worth bringing, we will tell you plainly rather than take it on and let it drift.

Call 833-370-8692 Free consultation. No fee unless we win.

Questions

Boynton Beach pedestrian and bicycle questions

My father was hit in a plaza parking lot on Congress Avenue. Is that different from being hit on the road?

Yes, and mostly in ways that help. Alongside the driver there may be a claim against the property over sight lines, striping, lighting or a walkway that was never there, and property owners carry their own insurance. Lot cameras are also far more common than street cameras, and they belong to the property rather than to a public agency. That footage is usually overwritten within weeks, so it has to be demanded in writing early.

It happened inside a gated community, involving a golf cart.

It is still a claim, and it runs on the same questions with a different set of records. A low-speed vehicle or golf cart raises its own coverage issues, and the association that maintains the roads, walkways and lighting may share responsibility for the conditions. Association minutes and work orders are where a hazard reported before the incident would appear, and they we can get.

The insurer says my mother’s injuries are just her age.

They argue it constantly in this part of the county and it is answerable. Florida compensates the aggravation of a pre-existing condition, and what separates one from the other is the record: what she could do the week before, what she could do afterward, and what her own doctors say about the difference. Prior imaging and treatment history generally help rather than hurt.

Are bicycle claims handled the same way?

Broadly yes. Cyclists have the same rights and duties as drivers on Florida roads, and the same coverage routes apply, including your own PIP and uninsured motorist coverage. The practical difference is that the driver’s account is even more likely to go unchallenged unless someone gathers the physical evidence quickly.

Does my car insurance help if I was hit while walking?

Very often yes, and it surprises people. Florida PIP follows the person, not only the car, so your own policy can cover you as a pedestrian or cyclist even though your vehicle was parked at home. Your uninsured motorist coverage may also apply if the driver fled or had no insurance.

The questions that come up on every kind of claim, deadlines, fees, recorded statements and fault, are answered on our Florida injury claim FAQ.

Tell us what happened

A lawyer will listen, tell you what Florida law does with those facts, and be straight with you about whether it is worth bringing. We are at 1375 E Gateway Blvd, Boynton Beach, FL 33426.

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