Attorneys for Pedestrians Injured in Fort Worth

Why the Insurer Will Try to Blame You

Blame shifting is a strategy, not an accident. The moment an adjuster can pin a slice of fault on you, the value of your claim starts to fall, and in Texas it can fall all the way to zero. The team at Goldberg & Loren answers the insurer’s friendly, pointed questions with evidence instead of guesses.

You have no duty to give the other driver’s insurer a recorded statement, and a few careless words can be twisted into an admission, so we handle those calls and let the physical proof speak first.

The Comparative Fault Trap Under the 51 Percent Rule

Texas uses modified comparative fault, and it carries a hard cliff. You can recover as long as your share of the blame stays at 50% or less, and your award shrinks by whatever percentage lands on you, but cross 51% and you collect nothing.

On a $200,000 claim, 20% fault recovers $160,000 and 50% still recovers $100,000, while one point higher is worth nothing. The insurer does not need to prove you caused the whole crash, only to nudge your share past the halfway mark, so strong evidence keeps your percentage low and keeps the claim alive.

What Texas Right of Way Law Says About Crosswalks

Most people think a crosswalk has to be painted to count. It does not. Texas law protects pedestrians at intersections whether or not the lines are on the pavement, and right of way is the backbone of a pedestrian claim.

When a driver violates it, that violation becomes powerful evidence of negligence, and the insurer’s stepped-out story starts to fall apart under the weight of the statute.

Marked and Unmarked Crosswalks Under Section 552

Section 552 of the Texas Transportation Code sets the rules for people on foot.

Drivers must yield to a pedestrian lawfully in a crosswalk, and an unmarked crosswalk exists at most ordinary intersections even with no paint on the ground, so a pedestrian crossing there has the right of way and a driver who rolls a right turn without looking has likely broken that duty.

The statute cuts both ways, asking pedestrians to follow signals and avoid darting into traffic, so we use the parts of the law that fit your facts and prepare for the parts the insurer will raise.

The Driver Due Care Duty That Survives a Mid-Block Crossing

Even away from an intersection, a driver is not free to hit whoever is in the road. Section 552 requires every driver to use due care to avoid striking a pedestrian, to sound the horn when needed, and to take extra caution around anyone confused or in distress.

Insurers love to say a person crossing outside a crosswalk is automatically at fault, but that is not the law: the driver still had to pay attention and try to avoid the collision once you were visible, and a person walking across four lanes is in the road for several seconds an attentive driver would have used to stop.

Fair is fair, and the statute does place duties on pedestrians too. Outside a crosswalk, a person on foot generally must yield to vehicles, and crossing against a signal can shift some fault onto the pedestrian.

But shared duty rarely means the pedestrian loses, because the 50% rule can still leave a substantial recovery when strong evidence keeps your share low.

How We Beat the They Darted Out Defense

The darted out defense lives or dies on evidence, and most of that evidence has a short shelf life. Beating it means moving before the proof disappears. These are the pieces that tend to decide whether the defense holds up.

• Traffic and nearby business camera footage that captured the crossing and the vehicle’s speed.
• The driver’s cell phone records, which can show a call or text at the moment of impact.
• The vehicle’s event data recorder, which logs speed and braking in the seconds before the hit.
• Skid marks, the point of impact, and where your body and belongings came to rest.
• Independent witnesses and the timing of the walk signal you were following.

Gathered together and fast, those pieces reconstruct the crossing second by second, and a driver who claimed you appeared from nowhere often turns out to have been speeding or distracted.

Camera footage and vehicle data vanish first, so those come first: convenience-store, apartment-gate, doorbell, and dash footage often overwrites within days, and a quick preservation letter can be the difference between proof and a shrug.

When a data download shows the driver never touched the brakes, or the phone log shows an active text at impact, the stepped-out story collapses, and an accident reconstruction can convert a fault dispute into a math problem the insurer cannot win.