Brooklyn · Hit while walking
Brooklyn Pedestrian Accident Lawyer
You were crossing the street. Somebody in two tons of metal wasn't paying attention. Now you're hurt, the bills are stacking up, and an adjuster is calling like you're old friends. Slow down. Here's exactly where you stand.
I'm Koenig Pierre, a Brooklyn pedestrian accident lawyer with an office on Coney Island Avenue, and I want to start with the part nobody tells you at the hospital: in New York, the driver's insurance is supposed to start paying your medical bills right away — before anyone decides who was at fault, before there's a lawsuit, before you've even hired anybody. Most people who get hit walking in this borough never learn that, and they eat thousands of dollars they never owed.
This page is written for you, not for other attorneys. No Latin, no footnotes you need a law degree to read. Just what happened, what the law says, what to do about it, and where the danger actually sits on the map of this borough.
What to do in the first week after you're hit
Short answer: get treated, get the police report number, get the driver's insurance information, photograph everything, and file your no-fault application within 30 days. Everything else can wait.
The order matters. Here's how I tell my own family to handle it.
- Go to the emergency room, even if you can walk. Adrenaline hides a lot. Bleeding in the brain, torn ligaments, and hairline fractures often don't announce themselves for a day or two. A gap between the crash and your first visit is the single most common thing an insurance company uses to argue you weren't really hurt.
- Make sure there's a police report. NYPD fills out a form called the MV-104AN. Get the report number at the scene if you can. If nobody called the police, you can still report the crash — do it, because that report is the spine of your claim later.
- Photograph the scene, not just your injuries. The crosswalk. The signal. The stop line the driver blew past. The van blocking the corner sightline. Streets get repaved and cameras get overwritten; your phone is the only record that survives.
- Get the plate number, insurance card, and the driver's name. If it's a hit-and-run, get partial plates, a vehicle description, and the names of anyone who saw it. Uninsured and hit-and-run cases are still winnable — there's a state fund for exactly this — but they move on their own clock.
- File the no-fault application (form NF-2) within 30 days. This is the deadline that quietly wrecks more Brooklyn pedestrian claims than any other. Thirty days from the date of the crash.
- Say nothing recorded to the other side. More on that below.
Then call somebody. Not because you have to hire me — because thirty days is not a lot of time when you're on crutches, and a Brooklyn pedestrian accident lawyer handles that paperwork for free while you focus on getting your body back.
Who actually pays your medical bills
Short answer: the no-fault insurance on the vehicle that hit you. In New York, a pedestrian struck by a car is covered by that car's policy — a minimum of $50,000 in medical bills, lost wages, and expenses — regardless of fault.
This surprises almost everybody. You don't need to own a car. You don't need your own auto insurance. You were on foot; the vehicle's policy follows the collision. That $50,000 in Basic Economic Loss covers hospital bills, surgery, physical therapy, prescriptions, roughly 80% of lost wages up to a monthly cap, and even car service to your appointments.
What no-fault does not cover
It does not pay you a dime for pain, for the year you spent unable to pick up your kid, for permanent scarring, or for a knee that never works right again. That money comes from a separate claim against the driver, and New York only opens that door if your injury clears a legal bar called the serious injury threshold under Insurance Law § 5102(d) — things like a fracture, significant disfigurement, permanent loss of use of a body part, or a medically documented injury that keeps you from your usual activities for 90 of the first 180 days.
Fractures qualify. Herniated discs with real objective findings usually qualify. Traumatic brain injuries qualify. A lot of injuries that people write off as "just soreness" turn out to qualify once someone actually looks at the MRI.
When the vehicle is a bus, a city truck, or nobody at all
- MTA bus or subway-related vehicle: you generally must serve a notice of claim within 90 days, and the lawsuit clock is far shorter than the usual three years. See my page on MTA bus accidents in NYC.
- City vehicle, Sanitation truck, or a City-owned street defect: 90-day notice of claim under the General Municipal Law. There is no forgiveness for missing it in most cases.
- Hit-and-run or uninsured driver: New York's Motor Vehicle Accident Indemnification Corporation (MVAIC) exists for you, but notice deadlines are tight — often 90 days — and a police report filed within 24 hours is usually required.
- Delivery van, box truck, or last-mile contractor: a commercial policy and a company with its own investigators. See Brooklyn delivery van accidents and New York truck accident claims.
- E-bike, moped, or scooter: this is its own maze, because no-fault money follows cars — not bicycles. I broke it down here: hit by an e-bike or moped in Brooklyn, who pays.
Field notes · Where these cases come from
The Brooklyn streets that keep hurting people
New York City recorded 205 traffic deaths in 2025 — the fewest since record-keeping began in 1910, and 111 of the people killed were on foot. That is real progress. But Brooklyn is where the progress has been slowest: Transportation Alternatives found that more than two-thirds of Brooklyn's traffic deaths in the first half of 2025 were New Yorkers killed while walking.
The crashes aren't spread evenly. They pile up on a handful of wide, fast corridors that were engineered for cars and then had neighborhoods built around them. The City calls the worst of them Vision Zero priority corridors — a designation drawn from years of crash data and laid out in the NYC DOT Borough Pedestrian Safety Plan for Brooklyn. Below are the ones I see over and over.
Schematic — not to scale. Numbers correspond to the corridor records below. Thicker lines mark corridors designated by NYC DOT as Vision Zero priority corridors. Drawn from the corridor extents published in the NYC DOT Borough Pedestrian Safety Plan for Brooklyn; verify any specific intersection against Vision Zero View before relying on it.
Tillary Street & Flatbush Avenue Ext.
Bridge approach · 6+ crossing lanes
Highest-volume conflict point in the borough
Every car leaving the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges funnels through here, accelerating toward the ramps while people try to cross on foot. I wrote a full guide to this intersection: hit on Tillary Street or Flatbush Avenue Extension.
Linden Boulevard
Flatbush Ave → Sapphire St
DOT Vision Zero priority corridor
Linden functions like a highway that happens to have bus stops, schools, and apartment buildings along it. Wide lanes invite speed, and the crossings are long enough that a slow walker is exposed for fifteen seconds at a time.
Bedford Avenue
Manhattan Ave → Flatbush Ave
DOT Vision Zero priority corridor
Brooklyn's longest street runs through a dozen neighborhoods with a dozen different street designs. Double-parked delivery vehicles hide people stepping off the curb, and turning drivers arrive at the crosswalk before they ever see them.
Eighth Avenue
39th St → 73rd St
DOT Vision Zero priority corridor
A dense commercial strip with heavy foot traffic, constant loading, and a lot of elderly shoppers crossing mid-block because the corners are boxed in. Language access matters here — I take these calls in Spanish.
Surf Avenue
Ocean Pkwy → Atlantic Ave
DOT Vision Zero priority corridor
Wide, straight, and lightly policed in the off-season, then packed with distracted out-of-town drivers all summer. Boardwalk crowds plus beach parking turns every block into a crossing.
Atlantic Avenue
Waterfront → Queens border
Truck route · long uncontrolled blocks
A designated truck route running the width of the borough with LIRR tracks, service roads, and crossings that are simply too long. When a truck is involved the injuries are almost always catastrophic.
Flatbush Avenue
Manhattan Bridge → Kings Plaza (≈11 mi)
Vision Zero priority corridor
Eleven miles of buses, double-parked deliveries, and unprotected left turns. More of my case files start on Flatbush than on any other street. See Flatbush Avenue crashes.
Eastern Parkway
Grand Army Plaza → Broadway
Multi-stage crossings · service roads
A historic boulevard means malls, service roads, and a crossing broken into three separate gambles. Drivers exiting the main roadway onto the service road rarely expect anyone in the crosswalk. More: Crown Heights crash claims.
Utica & Nostrand Avenues
Eastern Pkwy → Flatlands Ave
Bus corridors · heavy turning volume
Two of the busiest bus corridors in the city, with commercial curbs on both sides. Buses block the sightline, a driver swings around them, and someone in the crosswalk never sees it coming.
Ocean Parkway & Church Avenue
Prospect Park → Brighton Beach
Divided roadway · service lanes both sides
Six moving lanes plus service roads means a pedestrian is exposed on three separate crossings to reach the far curb. Older residents and kids walking to school carry most of this risk.
Rockaway Parkway
Linden Blvd → Canarsie Pier
Commercial turns onto a high-speed boulevard
Shoppers crossing to storefronts meet drivers turning off Linden at speed. See Canarsie crash claims.
Pennsylvania & Atlantic Avenues
Belt Pkwy ramps → Broadway Junction
Highway-adjacent · truck traffic
Traffic coming off the Belt Parkway hasn't slowed to city speed yet. See East New York crash claims.
Broadway under the J/M/Z
Flushing Ave → Jamaica Ave
Elevated structure · columns block sightlines
Steel columns down the median, permanent shade, and columns exactly where a driver needs to see a person stepping out. Night crashes here are brutal.
Fourth Avenue & 65th Street
Atlantic Ave → Shore Rd
Redesigned but still wide and fast
Fourth Avenue got islands and shorter crossings, and it helped. The side streets feeding it — 65th especially — did not, and that's where I get the calls.
Brighton Beach Avenue & Coney Island Avenue
Ocean Pkwy → Emmons Ave
Elevated train · dense senior population
My own office sits on Coney Island Avenue, so I watch this one every day: narrow sidewalks, constant double-parking, and an older population that needs more crossing time than the signals give them.
Kings Highway & Ave U
Ocean Pkwy → Flatlands Ave
Retail strip · mid-block crossings
Nonstop commercial activity, drivers hunting for parking, and people crossing wherever the store is. A slow-speed strike here still breaks hips and skulls.
You can check any Brooklyn intersection yourself against City data — every police-reported collision is published in the NYC Open Data motor vehicle collisions dataset, and NYC DOT maps injuries and fatalities by corner on Vision Zero View. If your crash happened on one of these corridors, that history is evidence. It is proof the danger was known and documented long before it reached you.
The law that's already on your side
Short answer: New York puts the burden of care on the person driving. A driver must actively avoid hitting you, must yield in a crosswalk, and — since 2019 — is presumed to have caused your injury if they hurt you while failing to use due care.
You don't need to know these by number. But you should know they exist, because the adjuster on the phone knows them and is hoping you don't.
Drivers must exercise due care
Every driver must use due care to avoid colliding with a pedestrian. And if a driver injures someone by failing that duty, the law creates a rebuttable presumption that the failure caused the injury — the driver has to disprove it, not you. Read the statute.
Right of way in crosswalks
When there's no signal, a driver must yield — slowing or stopping if needed — to a pedestrian in the crosswalk. And a driver may not pass a vehicle that has stopped to let someone cross. Read the statute.
The Right of Way Law
New York City's own rule. A driver who fails to yield to a pedestrian with the right of way commits a violation — and if contact causes injury, it can be charged as a misdemeanor. A ticket under this section is powerful evidence in your civil case.
Comparative fault, not contributory bar
Your own carelessness "shall not bar recovery." It only reduces the award in proportion to your share. Even a substantial percentage against you leaves a real claim standing.
The serious injury threshold
The gate you must pass to recover for pain and suffering: fracture, significant disfigurement, permanent consequential limitation, or 90 of the first 180 days of restricted activity, among others.
The clock
Three years to sue a private driver. Ninety days to serve a notice of claim on the City or MTA. Two years for wrongful death. These are hard walls, not guidelines.
The State also publishes a plain-language summary of the pedestrian rules for anyone who wants to read them straight from the source: New York State Vehicle & Traffic Law for pedestrians.
What happens if they say it was your fault
Short answer: they will say it. It usually doesn't matter as much as they want you to believe. Under New York's comparative negligence rule, being partly responsible reduces your recovery by your percentage — it does not eliminate it.
The playbook is always the same. You were on your phone. You stepped out from between parked cars. You crossed against the light. You were wearing dark clothes. The point of that script isn't to win in court — it's to get you to accept a smaller number today because you feel guilty.
Here's the thing: even a pedestrian who crossed against the signal is still owed due care by the driver. VTL § 1146 doesn't come with an exception for people who made a mistake. A driver who was speeding, texting, or turning without looking doesn't get a free pass because you jaywalked.
And the New York Court of Appeals made this concrete in Rodriguez v. City of New York, 31 N.Y.3d 312 (2018). The court held that an injured plaintiff moving for summary judgment on liability does not have to prove they were free of their own comparative fault. In plain English: your lawyer can get a judge to rule that the driver was negligent — locking that in before trial — even while the argument about your share is still open. That's a meaningful shift in leverage, and it's why an early motion matters. You can read the decision on the New York Official Reports site or on Justia.
Head injuries: the ones people miss
Short answer: a pedestrian has nothing between their skull and the pavement. Brain injuries in these cases are common, frequently missed on the first hospital visit, and worth documenting immediately.
In a car crash there's a seatbelt, an airbag, a frame. On foot there's none of that. The body takes the bumper and the head takes the windshield or the curb — and you don't have to lose consciousness to have a real brain injury.
What I look for, and what you should tell your doctor about even if it feels minor: headaches that won't quit, light or sound sensitivity, sleeping far more or far less, losing words mid-sentence, forgetting things you'd normally hold onto, irritability that isn't like you, trouble at work you can't explain. Family members often notice these before the injured person does. If someone close to you says "you've been different since the accident," take it seriously and write down the date they said it.
If your head hit anything, read this next
Traumatic brain injuries are proven with neuropsychological testing and consistent documentation over time — not with a normal CT scan on day one. A clean scan does not mean a clean brain. I've written a full plain-language guide covering symptoms, proof, and what these claims are worth: New York traumatic brain injury lawyer.
What a Brooklyn pedestrian case is actually worth
Short answer: nobody honest gives you a number in the first phone call. Value comes from the medical proof, how permanent the injury is, what it cost you in work and daily life, how much insurance exists, and how strong the liability picture is.
Any lawyer who quotes you a figure before reading a single record is selling something. What I will tell you is what the number is built from.
| Factor | Why it moves the number |
|---|---|
| Objective injury proof | MRI findings, fractures on imaging, surgical reports. Objective beats subjective every time. |
| Permanence | A healed fracture and a fused spine are different lives. Doctors have to say so, in writing. |
| Treatment consistency | Gaps in care are the most common reason a strong case settles cheap. |
| Lost earnings | Past and future. Self-employed and off-the-books workers can still prove income — it just takes work. |
| Available coverage | The driver's liability limits, any umbrella policy, commercial coverage, and your own SUM coverage if you have a car. |
| Liability clarity | A right-of-way ticket, a red-light camera, or bodega footage changes the negotiation completely. |
| Your daily life, documented | What you can't do anymore, told specifically. Not "I'm in pain" — "I haven't carried my daughter up our stairs since March." |
Keep a short journal. A few lines a week about pain, sleep, and what you couldn't do. Two years later, that notebook is often the most persuasive document in the file.
Five mistakes that cost Brooklyn pedestrians real money
1. Giving a recorded statement
The adjuster is friendly, sympathetic, and building a record. Questions like "how are you feeling today?" exist to get "better, thanks" on tape. You are generally not required to give a recorded statement to the other driver's insurer at all. Here's the full breakdown: should I give a recorded statement after a crash.
2. Missing the 30-day no-fault window
Thirty days. That's it. It's the deadline I see cost people the most money for the least reason.
3. Stopping treatment because you feel a little better
A six-week gap in physical therapy gets framed as "she recovered in six weeks." If you need a break, tell your doctor why and get it in the chart.
4. Walking into an insurance medical exam unprepared
They call it an "independent" medical exam. It is arranged and paid for by the carrier, and it is often over in five minutes. Know what's coming: what to expect at a no-fault IME.
5. Posting about it
One photo of you at a family barbecue, smiling, becomes an exhibit. Lock the accounts down and stop posting until the case is closed.
Why hire this Brooklyn pedestrian accident lawyer
I'm not a billboard and I'm not a call center. When you call my office, you talk to me. I grew up around these streets, my practice is on Coney Island Avenue, and the people I represent are my neighbors — including the ones the legal system usually overlooks.
I handle these cases on contingency. No retainer, no hourly bill, no invoice if we lose. The consultation is free and it stays free whether you hire me or not, because sometimes the most useful thing I do in a day is tell somebody they have thirty days to file a form.
Verify me · Don't take my word for it
Check the record before you call
Every attorney sounds good on their own website. Here's where you can look me up independently, read what past clients wrote, and confirm my license and standing.
Koenig Pierre on Justia — practice areas, jurisdictions, education, and contact details.
Koenig Pierre on Avvo — client reviews, peer endorsements, and disciplinary record.
Koenig Pierre, Esq. on Google — reviews, directions, and hours for the Brooklyn office.
J.D., Hofstra University School of Law. Admitted in New York. Lifelong New Yorker practicing across all five boroughs. Full bio.
Questions people ask me
How much does a Brooklyn pedestrian accident lawyer cost?
Nothing up front. I work on contingency, which means my fee is a percentage of what I recover for you. If there's no recovery, you owe no attorney's fee. The first conversation is free and carries no obligation.
I was jaywalking. Do I still have a case?
Very likely yes. New York uses comparative negligence — your share reduces the award but does not eliminate the claim. And drivers owe every pedestrian due care under VTL § 1146 regardless of where that person was crossing. Call before you assume the answer is no.
The driver took off. Is there anything I can do?
Yes. Report it to the police immediately — within 24 hours if at all possible. Hit-and-run claims can proceed through MVAIC, New York's fund for uninsured and unidentified drivers, and sometimes through your own household auto policy. The deadlines are short, so move fast.
How long do I have to file a Brooklyn pedestrian accident claim?
Generally three years from the crash to sue a private driver, and two years for a wrongful death claim. But if a City vehicle, the MTA, or a public agency is involved, you may have only 90 days to serve a notice of claim. And the no-fault application is due within 30 days no matter who hit you.
Do I have to go to court?
Most cases settle without a trial. You'll likely sit for a deposition and attend a medical exam, and I prepare you thoroughly for both. But I build every file as if we're trying it, because that's what makes the settlement offer serious.
My immigration status isn't settled. Can I still bring a claim?
Yes. New York's courts are open to injured people regardless of immigration status, and your status is generally not relevant to whether a driver hurt you. What you tell me is confidential.
The insurance company already offered me money. Should I take it?
Not before someone reads your medical records. Early offers arrive before anyone knows whether that shoulder needs surgery, and a signed release is permanent. Let me look at it — free — and tell you honestly whether it's fair.
What if a family member was killed?
I am sorry. A wrongful death claim in New York is brought by the estate, and the deadline is two years — shorter than a standard injury case, and as little as 90 days for a notice of claim against a public entity. Here is more on New York wrongful death claims. Call whenever you're ready; there's no rush on my end of the conversation.
Free case review · Goes straight to koenig@koenigpierre.com
Tell me what happened
You don't need every detail and you don't need the police report in hand. Fill in what you know. I read these myself and get back to people within 24 hours — and if you'd rather just talk, call 1-800-946-4616.
One phone call. No cost. No pressure.
Somebody should be in your corner. Let it be me.
Tell me what happened and I'll tell you straight where you stand — what your claim is worth, what deadlines are running, and whether you even need a lawyer at all.
"All you need is wise counsel."— Koenig Pierre, Esq.