Melrose Law of Asheville gets aggressive with car insurance companies when protecting pedestrian accident victims in Western North Carolina. If a careless driver struck you or a loved one, every medical bill you receive and every paycheck you lose while out of work should be covered.
Mark Melrose, Adam Melrose, and Melrose Law fully investigate your accident to make sure the blame stays with the driver at fault. Then we demand support that covers everything you’ve been through. We are ready to talk to you in a free consultation. It’s time to focus on healing while allowing us to fight on your behalf.
Do I Need a Lawyer After a Pedestrian Accident?
If you are struck by a car, but only come away with soreness and some minor bruising, you may not need a lawyer to get fair treatment. But if you are left with a serious injury and large medical bills, car insurance companies will do everything they can to get out of paying you. They may try to blame you or find a doctor who will question how bad your injuries are.
These are frustrating insurance tactics that a skilled lawyer can help protect you from. Your Melrose Law representative can investigate your accident and collect the necessary evidence. Once insurance adjusters are forced to accept full blame for the driver, we start aggressive negotiations to get you everything you need to fully recover. This is often much more than you could hope to win by filing a claim yourself.
What to Do First After an Asheville Pedestrian Accident
Time is always of the essence when it comes to personal injury claims. It is vital that you act quickly to preserve evidence related to the driver’s negligence. You can be sure that the driver’s insurance company will be doing whatever it can to avoid having to pay you or your family member’s medical bills and pain and suffering.
This evidence will be key in earning everything you can to pay for your recovery. See to your safety first and then try to complete these important tasks:
- Call 911. Request an ambulance if you or anyone else is hurt. Make sure the Asheville Police Department (APD) responds and collects everyone’s contact information. You will need to know the identity of the driver to make a claim against their insurance company. Give officers a full account of what you remember just before the collisions occurred.
- Get immediate medical attention. If you are injured, do not refuse to let the ambulance take you to the hospital, even though the EMS ride will be expensive. If you refuse medical care, the jury may believe you were not injured as badly as you say you were, and that could reduce the amount of money you obtain for your injuries. Inform paramedics and emergency room doctors about every pain. If you must leave the scene, ask someone with you or a helpful witness to collect a few details and photos for you.
- Take pictures of the driver’s vehicle, the scene of the collision, and your injuries. Photographs from the moments after a crash are extremely helpful in helping a jury understand the severity of the collision. These photographs can also help show the road conditions at the time of the impact, and the location of the car and the pedestrian at the time of impact. If you were in a crosswalk, be sure to get that in the photographs as well.
- Scan the Area for Surveillance Cameras: Note if any businesses or homes with security cameras nearby may have recorded what happened. Your attorney can request a copy of this footage before it’s erased.
- Get contact information from all witnesses. Your attorney will track down witnesses to get essential testimony.
- Contact an attorney. Attorneys who have experience handling pedestrian accidents know exactly what type of evidence to collect and where to start an investigation. We can also work with accident reconstruction teams to help you prove a careless driver was at fault for your injuries. The results of an investigation go a long way to protect you from false claims by insurance adjusters. Evidence also allows you to demand a larger pedestrian settlement check from an insurer.
What Can Be Compensated in a Pedestrian Accident Settlement Check?
Your Melrose Law representative files your claim for you and makes sure every hardship you’ve endured in the accident and in recovery is listed. This is an important step that must be done correctly, because any damage left out of an injury claim is something the insurance company can ignore.
Your attorney pressures insurance providers to act quickly while you are facing massive medical expenses and falling behind on paychecks.
We also check over any settlement offer you receive, to make sure it doesn’t leave you with any costs to pay yourself. It must also cover the future costs you may face due to your injury.
These are just a few of the things we will be checking settlement offers for:
- Money to pay all of your medical bills
- Money to pay for the care you’ll need in the future
- Support to cover life with a permanent physical disability
- Support for the pain you’ll endure
- Support for the emotional upheaval caused in your life
- Money to pay for travel to see specialists and surgeons
- Reimbursement for every cent you’ve lost while being out of work
- Money to replace or repair your personal property
- Wrongful Death support for families who lose a loved one in an Asheville pedestrian accident
Pedestrian Accident Dangers in Asheville
Asheville is a beautiful city with beautiful surroundings. It means that people don’t mind walking to school, to work, or to the store. Unfortunately, traffic levels and driver inattention leave travel on foot anything but tranquil and calm.
Drivers can inch forward into crosswalks, anticipating a green light. They can swipe across screens on their cellphones, not noticing a pedestrian walking across the street ahead. “Walk” signs can flip to “Don’t Walk” before people have a chance to cross six or more lanes of traffic. In Asheville, pedestrians are even asked to walk through tunnels beside loud, fast-moving cars in a place like Beaucatcher Tunnel.
What’s more, while downtown Asheville may be designed to make getting around on foot a bit easier, the busy highways that head east and west are not so inviting. Intersections along Leicester Highway feature packed lanes of fast-moving vehicles from sunup to sundown. There are crosswalks and Walk signs, but pedestrians must hustle to make it across in time. They must contend with impatient car and big rig drivers trying to make right turns in front of them.
These are all reasons that Asheville sees so many tragic pedestrian collisions each year. Sadly, many of these victims don’t receive the support they should as they attempt to rebuild their lives. In large part, it’s because victims and their families don’t realize the available benefits. They also can’t trust an insurance company to inform them of these benefits and provide what’s fair.
How Many Pedestrian Accidents Happen in Asheville Each Year?
According to recent NC DOT Crash Facts reports, Asheville has averaged 24 serious pedestrian accidents over a 5-year period (2019-2023). In 2023, Asheville was the scene for 24 accidents involving pedestrians, along with 3 tragic deaths. The accident levels were a bit lower than in recent years, but fatality rates remained high.
Overall, North Carolina recorded 250 accidents involving a pedestrian fatality in 2023.
Buncombe County documented 37 pedestrian collisions and 4 deaths in 2023.
Asheville Pedestrian Traffic Laws
There are strong traffic laws in North Carolina meant to protect pedestrians as they travel our cities and counties. So many accidents would be prevented if drivers kept up with these ordinances and paid attention to follow them.
Pedestrians should follow traffic signals at intersections where provided. But at intersections where a “Walk/Don’t Walk” Sign isn’t provided, responsibility falls on the driver to yield. These and other laws are laid out in North Carolina’s General Statutes (G.S.).
- 20-173. Pedestrians’ right-of-way at crosswalks.
“(a) Where traffic-control signals are not in place or in operation the driver of a vehicle shall yield the right-of-way, slowing down or stopping if need be to so yield, to a pedestrian crossing the roadway within any marked crosswalk or within any unmarked crosswalk at or near an intersection, except as otherwise provided in Part 11 of this Article.”
There are two other instances included in this statute where drivers are expected to yield the right of way.
- Drivers approaching an intersection should not pass a vehicle stopped to allow a pedestrian to pass.
- Drivers emerging from or entering an alley, building entrance, private road, or driveway should yield the right-of-way to any pedestrian.
Jaywalking, or crossing the street outside of a crosswalk, isn’t generally illegal in North Carolina. Pedestrians are required to use marked crosswalks at intersections with traffic signal devices that are working properly.
When crossing anywhere else, Pedestrians do have some legal responsibilities to keep themselves safe and to yield to approaching traffic.
- 20-174. Crossing at other than crosswalks; walking along highway.
“(a) Every pedestrian crossing a roadway at any point other than within a marked crosswalk or within an unmarked crosswalk at an intersection shall yield the right-of-way to all vehicles upon the roadway.
(b) Any pedestrian crossing a roadway at a point where a pedestrian tunnel or overhead pedestrian crossing has been provided shall yield the right-of-way to all vehicles upon the roadway.”
Legislators go further to direct pedestrians on how to travel highways without sidewalks.
“(d) Where sidewalks are provided, it shall be unlawful for any pedestrian to walk along and upon an adjacent roadway. Where sidewalks are not provided, any pedestrian walking along and upon a highway shall, when practicable, walk only on the extreme left of the roadway or its shoulder facing traffic which may approach from the opposite direction. Such pedestrian shall yield the right-of-way to approaching traffic.”
Most Common Reasons for Pedestrian Accidents
While many car collisions with pedestrians are the driver’s fault, there are a number of different factors that contribute to these serious incidents. Consideration of these potential risk factors can help prevent a collision and can help a lawyer explain to a jury why the collision may have occurred.
Alcohol Involvement
Alcohol is a very common factor in pedestrian accidents. Asheville is well-known for its strong craft beer scene, and it’s a common sight to see many pedestrians walking from bar to bar on a busy weekend evening. However, it’s also common to see these same pedestrians not treat the roadway with the care and respect that they deserve. According to the CDC, more than half of the pedestrian accident fatalities include alcohol as a contributing factor, either for the pedestrian or for the driver.
North Carolina also has a law called contributory negligence. If you or your loved one is found to have contributed at all to your injuries, such as by consuming alcohol and walking suddenly or carelessly into the roadway, you may be prevented from making a financial recovery, even if the driver of the vehicle was 99% at fault. It’s important to involve a lawyer early in the process, as we can address any alcohol involvement by the injured pedestrian in an honest way, but in a way that helps maximize your chance at a financial recovery.
Lack of Visibility
Many pedestrian accidents happen because the pedestrian was not visible to the vehicle, or the driver just otherwise failed to observe the pedestrian prior to the collision. We often hear drivers say at their depositions that the pedestrian “must have just walked into my vehicle.” While this is almost never the case, it does showcase the frequency with which visibility is a complicating factor.
Other contributing factors for the lack of visibility include fog, lack of streetlights, or dark colored clothing worn by the pedestrian. It can be extremely unsafe to walk on the side of the road in the middle of the night in black or other dark clothing. While drivers are responsible for paying attention to the road and “seeing what’s there to be seen,” if a jury believes a pedestrian’s garb or behavior was unsafe for the circumstances, the injured pedestrian may be precluded from recovery as a result of their behavior or dress.
Failure to Yield at Crosswalks
One of the most common places pedestrians are struck is actually inside a crosswalk. This often occurs when a vehicle turns left from a side road and strikes a pedestrian who had the right of way to cross the street.
While these are the easiest cases for a lawyer to prove that the driver was negligent, the best result is the pedestrian avoiding injury in the first place. You should always carefully observe vehicles entering from side streets, even when you are in a crosswalk and the crosswalk signal says that it’s your turn to cross the road.
Reckless Driving
Reckless driving (often at a high rate of speed) is a contributing factor in many pedestrian injury cases. This can take the form of aggressive driving to try to beat other traffic on the road, or just simple excessive speed. Speed limits are not a suggestion—they are set at specific thresholds to allow drivers enough time and space to slow down to avoid colliding with pedestrians. Asheville city streets often have a 25 to 35 miles per hour speed limit, and exceeding the speed limit and causing personal injury is negligent.
Our firm is experienced in hiring crash reconstruction experts or other engineers to help prove that a driver was exceeding the posted speed limit. The sooner we become involved in a case, the more likely we’ll be able to preserve physical evidence that will help prove the driver was the cause of your or your loved one’s injuries.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long do I have to file a pedestrian accident claim in North Carolina?
North Carolina allows injured victims to wait up to three years before filing a claim. For a wrongful death case, families would have only two years to file a wrongful death claim. Victims shouldn’t wait years to act, though. After months of delay, evidence can disappear, and witnesses can become hard to locate. Explore your options with a lawyer as soon as possible.
What if I can’t afford to pay an Asheville pedestrian accident attorney?
You don’t need any up-front money to hire excellent legal representation from Western North Carolina. Anyone can afford strong legal protection from Melrose Law. Our pedestrian accident lawyers work on a contingency basis. It means we only get paid if we win your case. If we lose, you don’t owe anything. If we win, our fee actually comes out of the settlement money that an insurance company must pay you.
What type of support can my family ask for after losing a loved one to a fatal accident?
Families may ask at-fault drivers for help with every financial need they have now and will face in the future. That can include money to help with paying off remaining medical bills and for funeral costs. A spouse, children, and other relatives of the victim should also receive support for the emotional loss and loss of companionship they can’t get back. The income the victim would have supported the family with in the future must also be replaced.
Contact an Asheville Pedestrian Accident Attorney
Your Melrose Law lawyer will fully investigate your accident and those responsible. The evidence gathered can make a big difference in the outcome of your case and the level of support you and your family receive. Victims of pedestrian collisions with the same general injuries can receive very different settlement amounts. A lawyer can help tip the scales of justice in your favor.
Our lawyers are happy to go over your case with you to determine the best course of action to help you rebuild your life after a pedestrian accident injury.
Melrose Law offers a free case consultation to all mountain pedestrian accident victims. There’s no obligation for your case review, and your consultation remains completely confidential. We have offices in Asheville and Waynesville, and we help victims from across Western North Carolina.
