Miami · Miami-Dade County

Miami 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 844-643-7200 for a free consultation. You pay us nothing unless we win. Our Miami personal injury lawyers have taken these cases across Miami-Dade County since 1993.

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

Your own policy May cover you on foot. Almost nobody thinks to look.

No fee unless we win Free case review, and nothing to pay to start.

Miami-Dade County Our Miami office takes these claims anywhere in the county.

In Miami-Dade County

Pedestrian and Bicycle claims in Miami

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.

The crossings that produce serious injuries here are on wide main roads where the distance between signalized intersections encourages mid-block crossing, and where drivers are traveling at main road speeds. Signal phase timing data and streetlight maintenance records we can get from the municipality, and they frequently contradict the assumption in the crash report that the pedestrian simply stepped out.

Short answer

A Miami-Dade pedestrian claim is usually built after the fact, because the driver gave the only account at the scene. What answers it is the vehicle damage, the sight lines and the unusually dense camera coverage in this county. Being outside a crosswalk affects how the blame is divided rather than ending a claim, and most claims carry a two-year filing deadline.

What to do after a pedestrian and bicycle in Miami

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 Miami

Miami-Dade walks more than most Florida counties and it drives faster than most, which is the collision in one sentence. The setting decides which records exist, and in this county there are usually more of them than people expect.

The causeways and the recreational routes

Rickenbacker, the Venetian and the beach approaches, where people on foot and on bicycles share a corridor with commuter traffic at speed.
- Cyclists and runners struck from behind, which is a different reconstruction from a crossing collision
- Narrow or intermittent shoulders, so there is nowhere to go when a vehicle drifts
- Toll gantry and causeway camera records, which timestamp vehicles precisely
- Roadway design and maintenance decisions made by a public authority, which changes the deadline
Station approaches and transit corridors

The walking routes into Metrorail and Metromover stations and along the bus corridors, which move a large number of people on foot every day.
- Crossings placed some distance from where people actually walk to reach a platform
- Station and transit vehicle cameras, held by an agency and something we can get by request
- Buses and shuttles whose blind spots include the space a person is standing in
- A claim involving a public agency cannot be filed until written notice has been given and answered
Downtown, Brickell and the beach at night

Dense blocks with constant pickup activity, where the vehicle that hits somebody is frequently stopping rather than traveling.
- Rideshare and delivery drivers stopping in the lane and pulling out without warning
- Trip and app data showing exactly what a driver was doing at that moment, which we can get
- Valet, garage and building cameras, which cover the street better than any public camera
- Impaired driving after closing, where a venue may carry a share under a narrow Florida rule
School zones and neighborhood streets

The collisions involving children happen close to home and close to school, and they are documented differently from anything else on this list.
- School zone speed enforcement records and any camera program covering the street
- Crossing guard placement and the times they were actually on post
- Sight lines blocked by parked vehicles, landscaping and construction fencing
- A child’s share of fault is assessed differently from an adult’s, which matters a great deal here

What causes them

Right turns on red, where the driver is looking left for a gap and walks the car into somebody on the right
Failure to yield at a marked crosswalk, which is the driver’s duty rather than a courtesy
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

The injuries we see, and what each one turns on

Head and brain injury

A brain injury does not require losing consciousness and a normal CT scan does not rule one out. What follows shows up in memory, concentration, sleep and temper, and the people around somebody usually notice before they do. It is proved with neuropsychological testing and treating records rather than with the scan taken that day.

Legs, knees and pelvis

Tibia and femur fractures, destroyed knees and pelvic fractures, several of which need hardware and then a second operation to remove or revise it. A first settlement offer usually arrives before anybody has said out loud that a second operation is coming, and it is priced on the bills that already exist.

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.

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 Miami-Dade County

Miami-Dade produces more electronic evidence than anywhere else on this list and almost none of it survives being asked for late. These lines are worked in parallel rather than in sequence.

What we go after, and when

Camera footage from buildings, garages, valet stands and businesses within sight, most of it overwritten inside a month
Rideshare and delivery trip data, which shows what a driver was doing at the moment of impact
The damage on the vehicle, its location and its height, which indicates speed and body position
Toll gantry, transit and station records, which timestamp vehicles and people precisely
The clothing and everything being carried, kept unwashed, which answers the visibility argument
Signal and pedestrian phase timing, and streetlight outage history, both held by the municipality or the county
The trauma center record from the first hours, including imaging and the described how the injury happened
The declarations pages for every policy in play, since what responds here is rarely what anybody assumes

Where a public agency may share responsibility for a crossing, a signal interval or a stop placement, the written notice has to go out early and in writing. It is the one item on this list with no second chance.

A setting a pedestrian and bicycle claim in Miami typically arises from

Who would handle your case

Being hurt in Miami 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 wearing dark clothing: Raised in nearly every collision after dark, and answered with the clothes themselves, which is the reason to keep them. It is also a question about the road as much as about you: what the lighting there actually measured that night, and whether the fixture above the crossing had been reported out. Both are on record with the utility or the municipality.
You were not in the crosswalk: It affects how the blame is divided, it does not end a claim, and it is rarely the whole story. How far the nearest signal was, whether there was a sidewalk at all, and whether a bus stop had been placed where crossing was the only way to reach it are all part of the picture. So is the driver’s independent duty to use due care regardless of where somebody was walking.
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.

What a claim can include

Lost income and lost earning capacity

Wages missed, and separately what somebody can no longer earn. A person who returns in a lighter role at less money has a loss that a pay stub does not show on its own.

Pain, and what daily life has become

Walking, sleeping, standing at work, and the confidence to cross a road again, which people underestimate until they try. It is proved with the account of the people around the injured person as much as with records.

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.

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 Miami arises from

Why Wolf & Pravato in Miami

A Miami-Dade pedestrian case is filed in the Eleventh Judicial Circuit, and the firm has an office on Brickell Avenue rather than a mailing address in the county. These cases run on footage and records that have to be requested locally and quickly, and the firm has recovered $3,850,000 for a pedestrian struck by a vehicle.

The firm is led by a Board Certified Civil Trial lawyer, a certification held by 861 attorneys in Florida against a membership over 109,000. Insurance companies keep their own records of which firms in a county actually try cases, and that record moves an offer further than anything a firm can say about itself.

There is no charge to ask. Our fee comes out of what we recover and nowhere else, and if the answer is that you do not have a case, that is the answer you will get.

Call 844-643-7200 Free consultation. No fee unless we win.

Questions

Miami pedestrian and bicycle questions

The report says I was not in a crosswalk in Miami. Is my claim finished?

Not necessarily. Crossing outside a marked crosswalk affects how the blame is divided rather than automatically ending the claim, though being found more than 50 percent responsible does end it. Driver speed, sight lines, lighting and how far the nearest signal actually was all bear on that split, and all of them are documentable. The driver also has an independent duty to use due care whether or not you were where you should have been.

A rideshare driver hit me while I was crossing.

That usually helps, because a driver logged into an app may be covered by a commercial policy considerably larger than a personal one. What applies depends on whether they were waiting, en route or carrying a passenger at the time, and the trip data answers that question. It we can get, which is why establishing the app status at the moment of the collision is worth doing immediately.

I do not own a car. Does anything pay my medical bills?

Possibly, and it takes a few questions to find out. Florida PIP follows the person, so a policy in the household of a resident relative may respond even though you own nothing. Where there is no such policy, the PIP on the vehicle that struck you can come into play, and the driver’s bodily injury coverage sits behind that. It is worth an hour of somebody reading the actual policies rather than assuming there is nothing.

The driver drove off. Is there anything to be done?

Yes. Uninsured motorist coverage commonly responds to hit-and-run claims, including when the injured person was on foot or on a bicycle, and the notice requirements are strict enough that they are worth handling straight away. Separately, camera footage near the scene finds these drivers more often than people assume, but it does not survive long.

The police report blames me. Is my claim over?

No. A crash report reflects an officer’s conclusion, usually formed from the only account available at the scene, which is the driver’s. It is not binding and it is not evidence at trial in the way people imagine. Signal timing, lighting records and the physical damage regularly tell a different story.

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 1111 Brickell Avenue, 11th Floor, Miami, FL 33131.

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