What to Do After a Pedestrian Accident in Florida

What to do after a pedestrian accident in Florida starts with one deadline almost nobody hears about at the scene: you have 14 days to receive medical care, or the $10,000 in no-fault benefits that would have paid for it disappears. That rule lives in Florida's motor vehicle insurance statute, and it applies to a person who was walking exactly as it applies to a person who was driving. Pedestrians miss it constantly, for an understandable reason: someone who was crossing a street on foot does not think of their broken wrist as a car insurance claim.

The second thing worth knowing before anything else is that the reporting duties belong to the driver, not to you. You are not the one who has to file anything. What you have to do is get treated, get identified, and get the facts fixed in writing before they dissolve.

The Short Version — Your First 48 Hours

If you are reading this in an emergency department, this is the whole article. Everything after it explains the reasoning and what goes wrong when a step is skipped.

1. Do not get up and walk it off. If you can, stay put and let EMS evaluate you at the scene.
2. Call 911, or have someone call. An officer on scene is what creates the record.
3. Get the driver's name, address, vehicle registration, and insurance. Under FL § 316.062 they are legally required to give it.
4. Photograph everything you can reach: the vehicle and its plate, its position, the roadway, signals and markings, the light conditions, your injuries.
5. Get names and phone numbers of witnesses yourself. They leave, and the report does not always capture them.
6. Be seen by a doctor within 14 days. This is a hard PIP deadline, not a suggestion.
7. Notify your own auto insurer, even though you were walking. Your PIP is usually the policy that pays.
8. Do not give the driver's insurer a recorded statement before you have talked to a lawyer.

Step 1 — Stay Down, and Let Someone Else Do the Reporting

A person struck by a car is running on adrenaline, and adrenaline is very good at hiding a fracture, a bleed, or a concussion for twenty minutes. The reflex to stand up, apologize, and tell everyone you are fine is the single most expensive reflex in a pedestrian case — medically first, and then legally, because "he said he was okay" ends up in the narrative.

The driver's obligations are set out in FL § 316.062: give name, address, and vehicle registration number; show a license or permit on request to any person injured in the crash; give the same information to any police officer at the scene or investigating; and render reasonable assistance to anyone injured, including arranging transport for treatment where it is apparent treatment is necessary. If nobody is in a condition to receive that information and no officer is present, the driver must report to the nearest police authority. Violating the section is a noncriminal traffic infraction.

FL § 316.065 puts the immediate notice duty on the driver as well. And under FL § 316.066, a law enforcement officer who investigates a crash resulting in death or personal injury must complete a Florida Traffic Crash Report, Long Form and submit it within 10 days after completing the investigation. None of these are your duty. Calling 911 is still the highest-value thing you can do, because it is what puts an officer on the scene while skid marks, vehicle position, and witnesses are still there.

Step 2 — Get Treated Within 14 Days, and Understand Why That Number Matters

FL § 627.736 requires PIP medical benefits covering 80 percent of reasonable expenses for medically necessary medical, surgical, X-ray, dental, and rehabilitative services, including ambulance and hospital services — if the injured person receives initial services and care within 14 days after the motor vehicle accident. The policy limit is $10,000 in medical and disability benefits and $5,000 in death benefits.

There is a second tier inside that limit that catches people. Reimbursement runs up to the full $10,000 only where a physician licensed under chapter 458 or 459, a dentist under chapter 466, a physician assistant, or an advanced practice registered nurse under chapter 464 has determined that you had an emergency medical condition. If a provider determines you did not, reimbursement is limited to $2,500. That determination is a clinical finding that has to be made and documented by a qualifying provider — which is one more reason a walk-in clinic visit three weeks later is not equivalent to being evaluated properly now.

In Orlando that means Orlando Regional Medical Center or AdventHealth Orlando for a serious impact, and Nemours Children's Hospital for a child. Tell the intake staff you were struck by a vehicle while on foot. It changes the workup, and it puts the mechanism of injury in the chart on day one, where no adjuster can later claim you were vague about how it happened.

Step 3 — Whose Insurance Actually Pays

This is where most articles on this subject get it wrong in one direction or the other, so here is the statutory test. Florida PIP follows the person. FL § 627.736 requires coverage for the named insured and relatives residing in the same household for accidental bodily injury sustained while not an occupant of a self-propelled vehicle, where the injury is caused by physical contact with a motor vehicle. That is the pedestrian case exactly.

The striking vehicle's PIP is the fallback, not the default. The statute extends that vehicle's coverage to other persons struck by it and injured while not occupying a self-propelled vehicle — but conditions it on the injured person not being the owner of a motor vehicle with respect to which security is required, and not being entitled to personal injury benefits from the insurer of such an owner.

PIP is only the medical floor. It pays without regard to fault and it stops at $10,000, which a pedestrian impact exhausts quickly. Everything beyond it — the rest of the medical bills, lost income, pain and suffering — comes from the driver's bodily injury liability coverage, or from your own uninsured motorist coverage where the driver has none. FL § 627.727 requires UM coverage protecting persons insured under the policy who are legally entitled to recover damages from owners or operators of uninsured motor vehicles, unless a named insured rejected it in writing. Nothing in that requirement conditions it on your having been inside a car. For how the no-fault layer works in general, see our explainer on Florida no-fault PIP.

Step 4 — Get the Crash Report, and Know What It Is Not

Two facts about the report, both of which cut against what people are usually told.

First, it is not evidence. FL § 316.066 provides that crash reports may not be used as evidence in any trial, civil or criminal. A report narrative that assigns fault to you does not decide your case, and a report that assigns fault to the driver does not win it. Both sides prove fault through testimony, physical evidence, and records. What the report does is preserve the raw material — identities, insurance, witness contacts, measurements, the diagram — and establish that the crash occurred at all.

Second, it is not immediately public, but it is immediately available to you. Crash reports revealing personal information about the parties are confidential and exempt for 60 days after filing. Within that period they may be released to the parties involved, their legal representatives, their insurance agents and insurers, law enforcement, victim services programs, and certain government agencies. As a condition of getting one inside the 60 days you must present a valid driver license or other photo identification or proof of status, and file a written sworn statement that the information will not be used for commercial solicitation of accident victims or disclosed to a third party for that purpose. Knowingly misusing that information is a third-degree felony.

That 60-day window is also why the first call you get from a chiropractic clinic or a "claims service" you never contacted usually arrives on about day 61. It is not a sign anyone is looking out for you.

Step 5 — Preserve What Disappears First

Pedestrian crashes are proved with things that decay on a schedule. In rough order of how fast they go:

• Video. Gas stations, storefronts, apartment complexes, buses, and doorbell cameras along a corridor like Colonial Drive or Orange Blossom Trail routinely overwrite footage within days to a couple of weeks. Someone has to ask, in writing, quickly. This is the single most common piece of decisive evidence that is lost by default.
• The vehicle. Impact damage, a cracked windshield, mirror position, and the modules inside the car are all repaired or sold away. Its condition is a record of speed and point of contact.
• The scene at the same hour. Most pedestrian deaths nationally happen in the dark — NHTSA reports 76 percent of pedestrians killed in 2024 died in dark conditions. Whether a streetlight was out, whether a signal head was obscured, what a driver could actually see: photograph it at the same time of night, not at noon.
• Your clothing and shoes, unwashed. Transfer marks, tears, and where the damage sits on the garment tell an accident reconstructionist things you cannot.
• Witnesses. Memory degrades in weeks. Phone numbers collected at the scene are worth more than anything reconstructed later.

Keep a plain log alongside it: medical visits, out-of-pocket costs, days of work missed, what you cannot do now that you could do before. Photograph visible injuries on a schedule as they heal.

Step 6 — Expect the Fault Argument, Because It Is Coming

The adjuster's opening move in nearly every pedestrian claim is that you were not in a crosswalk. NHTSA's 2024 pedestrian data shows that most pedestrian fatalities occur at locations that are not intersections, which tells you how standard the argument is rather than how strong it is in your case.

It matters because of FL § 768.81. Contributory fault chargeable to the claimant diminishes the damages award proportionately, and subsection (6) bars recovery entirely for a claimant found more than 50 percent at fault. So the fight is not usually about whether you recover at all; it is about a percentage that moves the number. Our explainer on Florida comparative negligence works the arithmetic through.

What defeats the reflexive version of the argument is knowing what the crosswalk rules actually say. Florida recognizes unmarked crosswalks at intersections, paint is not required for a crosswalk to exist, and drivers carry a separate due-care duty regardless. We take that apart provision by provision in Florida crosswalk law § 316.130. Until you have talked to a lawyer, do not narrate the crossing to an adjuster. You will be asked where you were looking, and there is no version of that answer that helps you.

If the Driver Left the Scene

Nearly one in four pedestrians killed in the United States in 2024 was struck by a hit-and-run driver, according to NHTSA. It is a category of crash, not an aberration.

FL § 316.027 requires a driver involved in a crash resulting in injury to stop immediately at the scene, or as close as possible, and remain until the requirements of § 316.062 are met. Willfully leaving is a felony, and the degree rises with the severity of what the crash caused. That is a criminal matter, prosecuted by the state, and it is not your compensation.

Your recovery in that situation runs through insurance. PIP does not require anyone to be identified. Uninsured motorist coverage under FL § 627.727 is the layer that reaches beyond it. What a Florida UM claim requires when the vehicle is never found is genuinely policy-specific and fact-specific — take it to a lawyer with your declarations page in hand rather than resolving it from an article.

Local Context: Orange County

In Orange County, 325 of the 1,050 fatal crashes recorded in the federal NHTSA FARS census between 2019 and 2024 involved a pedestrian, accounting for 333 deaths — about 31 percent of the county's fatal crashes. That scope is fatal-only; FARS counts crashes in which someone died, so it says nothing about the far larger number of pedestrians who are struck and survive.

The corridors where those deaths concentrate are the ones you would expect if you drive here: Colonial Drive and Orange Blossom Trail well ahead of everything else. We rank them, with the counts and the limits of a count ranking, in Orlando's deadliest roads for pedestrians. If you were struck on one of those roads, that history is worth knowing about, because a corridor with a documented record is a corridor where lighting, signal timing, and crossing distance have already been studied by somebody.

Your Deadline

Florida's limitations period for an action founded on negligence is two years under FL § 95.11, for causes of action accruing after March 24, 2023. Calendar it. Then ignore it, in the sense that it will never be the deadline that decides your case. Fourteen days decides whether PIP pays. A couple of weeks decides whether the video still exists. Sixty days decides who else has your contact information. Two years is the outer wall of a room you should have finished walking across long before.

Florida Pedestrian Accident Steps — FAQ

Sources

Every legal claim and statistic on this page traces to a primary source. Verify any of it yourself:

• Fla. Stat. § 316.062 (2025) — Duty to give information and render aid
• Fla. Stat. § 316.065 (2025) — Crashes; reports; penalties
• Fla. Stat. § 316.066 (2025) — Written reports of crashes
• Fla. Stat. § 316.027 — Crash involving death or personal injuries
• Fla. Stat. § 627.736 (2025) — Required personal injury protection benefits
• Fla. Stat. § 627.727 (2025) — Uninsured motorist coverage
• Fla. Stat. § 768.81 (2025) — Comparative fault
• Fla. Stat. § 95.11 (2025) — Limitations other than for the recovery of real property
• NHTSA Traffic Safety Facts — Pedestrians: 2024 Data (DOT HS 813818)

Orange County figures are computed from the NHTSA Fatality Analysis Reporting System data committed to this site; see our data methodology.

This article is general information about Florida law, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Statutes change and individual facts matter.