Every other page in this strand is about what a vehicle does to the people inside a vehicle. This one is about the person outside. A person on foot has no crumple zone, no belt, no steel between the bumper and the bone, and what happens to that body is decided by three things the person did not choose: how fast the vehicle was going, how tall and blunt its front end was, and whether it was dark.
The numbers. “There were 7,080 pedestrians and 1,075 bicyclists killed in 2024,” and “Pedestrian deaths have increased 72% since reaching their low point in 2009 and account for 18% of crash fatalities” (IIHS, Pedestrians and bicyclists). In 2022, the federal fact sheet reports, “there were 7,522 pedestrians killed in traffic crashes,” and the sheet says where and when: “More pedestrian fatalities occurred in the dark (78%) than in daylight (19%), dusk (2%), and dawn (2%) in 2022,” and “Sixteen percent of the pedestrian fatalities occurred at intersections, 75 percent occurred at locations that were not intersections” (NHTSA, Traffic Safety Facts, Pedestrians, 2022 data). Three of every four are away from an intersection. Nearly four of every five are in the dark.
Speed. The curve that matters most was drawn from federal crash data by the AAA Foundation. “The average risk of death for a pedestrian reaches 10% at an impact speed of 23 mph, 25% at 32 mph, 50% at 42 mph,” “75% at 50 mph, and 90% at 58 mph,” and the risk of severe injury runs ahead of it: “the average risk of severe injury for a pedestrian struck by a vehicle reaches 10% at an impact speed of 16 mph,” 50 percent at 31 and 90 percent at 46. “Risks vary significantly by age,” and the report’s example is the one to remember: the risk “for a 70-year old pedestrian struck by a car traveling at 25 mph is similar to the risk for a 30-year-old pedestrian struck at 35 mph” (AAA Foundation, Tefft, 2011). The Insurance Institute puts the same point in one sentence: “small increases in vehicle speeds have an especially large impact on the risk of a serious injury or fatality” (IIHS). Seven Times the Energy explains why: the energy rises with the square of the speed, and a body on foot has nowhere to put it.
Where the vehicle meets the body. The shape of the front end decides which part of the person takes the hit and what happens next. “Pedestrians and bicyclists are more likely to die or be seriously injured when struck by SUVs or pickups,” and “A big reason for this is the height and shape of these vehicles’ front ends.” The Institute’s own crash research found that “vehicles with hoods more than 40 inches off the ground were about 45% more likely to cause pedestrian fatalities than vehicles with hood heights lower than 30 inches and sloped front ends,” and that “Medium-height vehicles with blunt front ends were 26% more likely to kill a pedestrian.” The mechanism is two different crashes. “Taller vehicles are twice as likely to knock down the pedestrian and run them over,” “whereas passenger cars are more likely to strike an adult pedestrian in the legs and throw them onto the hood” (IIHS, Pedestrians and bicyclists). In the study behind those numbers, “tall and blunt vehicles primarily inflicted torso injuries with their front ends rather than with the tops of their hoods,” “They were more likely to injure pedestrians by throwing them forward,” while “tall and sloped vehicles usually rolled them onto the hood of the vehicle first” (IIHS, Nov. 14, 2023). A car tends to take the legs and carry the person on the hood; a tall, blunt front end tends to take the torso and pelvis, knock the person down and, twice as often, run them over. At the same speed, that shape is what the Institute measured as about 45 percent more deaths.
The second and third impacts. The vehicle is only the first thing the body hits. The Third Collision describes the sequence for a person inside a car: the car stops, the body keeps going, the organs keep going after the body stops. For a person on foot the sequence is the vehicle, then the hood or the windshield or the ground, then the ground again as the body slides, and for the person knocked down, the wheels. The head takes the hood and the windshield frame, the pelvis and the long bones take the bumper, and the ground takes everything else. Thrown Clear explains why being thrown is not an escape; the person on foot was never inside anything to be thrown from.
The dark. Seventy-eight percent of these deaths are in the dark, and Past the Light and Looking, Not Seeing say why: low beams light about the next two hundred feet, a car at highway speed needs more than that to stop, and a dark shape in the lane registers late in a brain that expects an empty road. None of that is the person’s doing. It is the reason the law puts the duty where it does.
What the law asks. Texas gives a pedestrian in a crosswalk the right of way: “The operator of a vehicle shall stop and yield the right-of-way to a pedestrian crossing a roadway in a crosswalk” where no traffic control signal is in place or in operation and the pedestrian is on the driver’s half of the road or “approaching so closely from the opposite half of the roadway as to be in danger,” and in the same breath says a pedestrian “may not suddenly leave a curb or other place of safety and proceed into a crosswalk in the path of a vehicle so close that it is impossible for the vehicle operator to stop and yield” (Transportation Code Section 552.003). Outside a crosswalk, “A pedestrian shall yield the right-of-way to a vehicle on the highway” (Section 552.005). But the section that decides most of these cases comes after both of those, and it begins with the word that overrides them: “Notwithstanding another provision of this chapter, the operator of a vehicle shall” “exercise due care to avoid colliding with a pedestrian on a roadway,” “give warning by sounding the horn when necessary,” and “exercise proper precaution on observing a child or an obviously confused or incapacitated person on a roadway” (Section 552.008). And every driver must “control the speed of the vehicle as necessary to avoid colliding with another person or vehicle that is on or entering the highway in compliance with law and the duty of each person to use due care” (Section 545.351). A person outside the crosswalk has not forfeited the case. The jury, as the trier of fact, assigns “the percentage of responsibility, stated in whole numbers” to each person who had a hand in it (Civil Practice and Remedies Code Section 33.003), the claimant recovers unless that share is “greater than 50 percent” (Section 33.001), and A Hand in It and Comparative Fault walk through how that arithmetic treats the person who was not where the paint said to be.
The record. The speed is in the vehicle’s own event data recorder and in the length of the marks. The height and shape of the front end are a matter of the make and model. The light is a matter of the time, the lamps and the weather. The injuries themselves say which kind of crash it was: fractures of the lower legs and a head wound at hood height say a car; a crushed pelvis and chest, or injuries from the wheels, say a tall front end that knocked the person down. The first letter asks for the recorder, the camera and the vehicle before any of it is repaired (Spoliation). Nothing here is about any one crash; what happened on a particular road is for its record to say.
Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, Pedestrians and bicyclists (updated August 2026) (By the numbers; Overview; Vehicle speeds; Vehicle design and crash severity). IIHS, Vehicles with higher, more vertical front ends pose greater risk to pedestrians (Nov. 14, 2023). AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, Brian C. Tefft, Impact Speed and a Pedestrian’s Risk of Severe Injury or Death (Sept. 2011) (the summary figures, from federal crash data for 1994 to 1998). NHTSA, Traffic Safety Facts, Pedestrians: 2022 Data, DOT HS 813 590 (July 2024) (Key Findings; Crash Characteristics). Tex. Transp. Code § 552.003 (subsection (a)); § 552.005 (subsection (a)); § 552.008; § 545.351 (subsection (b)(2)); Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 33.003 (subsection (a)); § 33.001, as posted on FindLaw, current as of January 1, 2026. This is general information, not legal advice. Figures and text as published at publication.
