Pedestrian Injured While Crossing a “T-intersection” --- You be the Judge!

Pedestrian Crossing a “T-intersection” -- You be the Judge!

Dale G. Larrimore, Esquire

Facts:

          Betty was a 20 year old student, leaving school and on her way to her evening job. She came out of the front of her school and walked across the lawn to the roadway in front – a busy route with two lanes in each direction.  Betty intended to cross the road to reach a bus stop on the other side of the road, on the corner of the entrance to a housing development. There were no traffic controls for vehicles on the main road. Cars coming out of the development on the other side of the road had a stop sign. There were no painted crosswalks. It was about 5:30 and getting dark, on a cold wintery day.

            Betty could have walked about ¼ mile in either direction to an intersection controlled by a traffic light, but she elected to cross right in front of her school so that she would not miss her bus. Betty successfully walked across the two lanes coming from her left, but after crossing the double yellow lines in the center of the road, Betty was hit by a car coming from her right – knocking her over 100 feet down the road. Betty sustained a concussion and multiple fractures in both legs – necessitating repeated surgeries and causing a very lengthy period of disability.

            Under the Pennsylvania Vehicle Code, where there are no traffic control signals in operation at an intersection, vehicle drivers are required to yield the right of way to pedestrians crossing the roadway within any marked crosswalk or within any unmarked crosswalk at an intersection. However, every pedestrian crossing a roadway at any point other than within a crosswalk at an intersection or any marked crosswalk must yield the right-of-way to all vehicles upon the roadway.

            Can Betty recover for her harms and losses from the driver that struck her?

You be the judge!

Result:

                When Betty came to us for representation, the insurance carrier for the car that struck her denied liability. The insurance adjuster argued that Betty should have walked to one of the near-by intersections, where she could have utilized the traffic light to safely cross this busy road, filled with commuter traffic. The adjuster claimed that she was negligent for not crossing where there was a marked crosswalk and that she failed to yield the right of way to traffic on the road.

                We went out to the site of Betty’s accident and noticed that there were sidewalks along each side of the road going into the housing development across the main road, in the direction Betty was walking. The bus stop was right at the corner of this T-intersection, adjacent to the sidewalk.

                As the author of Pennsylvania Rules of the Road, I recognized that a path of safety for a pedestrian does not have to be marked to be considered a crosswalk. Although the definition of a crosswalk in the Pennsylvania Code does refer to “markings across roadways,” the Vehicle Code definition of a crosswalk is not so limited. Under the Vehicle Code, a crosswalk is merely that part of a road, whether marked with lines or not, “at an intersection” that is included “within the extension of the lateral lines of an existing sidewalk” leading to the intersection, or any portion of a roadway “in an intersection or elsewhere” that is distinctly indicated for pedestrian crossing by lines or other markings. Looking at the point of impact, we noted that it was in line with the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street, on the road entering the housing development. Thus we were able to prove that Betty was crossing the road within a crosswalk. Although not marked as a crosswalk, it was still, legally, a crosswalk.

                Under Pennsylvania law, although a pedestrian must exercise due care in crossing any street, the mere fact that a pedestrian crossed between intersections is not sufficient to demonstrate any negligence on the part of the pedestrian. A T-intersection is an intersection and pedestrians in an unmarked crosswalk have the right of way.  After interviewing multiple witnesses and taking a statement from the police officer who investigated the accident, we were able to convince the insurance carrier to offer the full limits of the driver’s insurance policy and make a very substantial recovery on behalf of our client.
                It helps to have an attorney who knows the Rules of the Road!