A pedestrian struck by a car at Five Points or Eau Claire has no protection at all, so the injuries can be catastrophic or fatal. South Carolina law protects pedestrians, and when a driver's negligence causes an accident, the injured pedestrian can recover compensation, as long as they were 50 percent or less at fault.
At the Arndt Law Firm, we represent pedestrians injured across Columbia and Richland County. If you wonder whether you are owed compensation, contact us for a free consultation.
South Carolina law gives pedestrians specific protections, and the most important is the right-of-way in crosswalks. Under South Carolina Code section 56-5-3130, when a pedestrian is crossing within a crosswalk, a driver must yield the right of way, slowing or stopping as needed to allow the pedestrian to cross safely.
This applies at marked crosswalks and, in many circumstances, at unmarked crosswalks that exist at intersections. A driver who fails to yield to a pedestrian lawfully in a crosswalk has violated this duty.
The law adds further protection by prohibiting a driver from passing a vehicle that has stopped at a crosswalk to let a pedestrian cross. This rule addresses a common and dangerous scenario: a driver stops for a pedestrian, and a second driver, unable to see the pedestrian, passes the stopped vehicle and strikes them.
By prohibiting this maneuver, the law recognizes the hidden danger it creates and places responsibility on the passing driver. A pedestrian struck in exactly this way, stepping out from in front of a vehicle that properly stopped, is the victim of a clear statutory violation by the driver who passed it, even though that driver may claim the pedestrian appeared suddenly.
These crosswalk protections are central to many pedestrian accident claims because they define the driver's duty in the situations where pedestrians are most often struck.
A pedestrian crossing in a crosswalk with the right of way who is hit by a driver who failed to yield has been injured by a clear violation of South Carolina law, and a lawyer can establish the driver's responsibility by establishing that violation.
Pedestrians also have duties, such as obeying signals, but the law's protections in the crosswalk are strong and frequently decisive.
South Carolina law even recognizes that a crosswalk can exist at an intersection without painted lines, in the area where the sidewalks would connect across the road, and a pedestrian crossing there is generally entitled to the same right of way as at a marked crosswalk.
Drivers often assume that the absence of paint means the absence of a crosswalk, and they fail to yield accordingly, but the law does not share that assumption. Understanding where a crosswalk legally exists, marked or not, can be decisive in establishing that a pedestrian had the right of way and that the driver who struck them violated a duty the law imposed.
South Carolina law also addresses crossings controlled by a traffic signal or a pedestrian signal. If a signal directs pedestrian movement, a pedestrian who begins crossing on a lawful signal generally retains the right of way for the remainder of the crossing, even if the signal changes before they reach the other side, and a driver turning across that crossing must still yield.
A driver who turns into a crosswalk while a pedestrian is lawfully proceeding on the signal has failed to yield in a manner that can establish negligence just as clearly as a failure to yield at an unsignaled crosswalk.
Violating these right-of-way statutes is also a traffic offense in its own right, separate from any civil claim, and a citation issued to a driver after a crash can become useful evidence of the violation underlying a pedestrian's injury claim.
Beyond the crosswalk rules, South Carolina law requires drivers to exercise due care to avoid striking pedestrians, recognizing that a pedestrian has no protection against a vehicle.
This duty applies broadly, requiring a driver to remain attentive, to anticipate the presence of pedestrians, and to take reasonable care to avoid hitting them, including by sounding a horn when necessary and exercising particular caution around children and others who may be especially vulnerable.
Not every pedestrian crash happens in a crosswalk. A pedestrian may be walking along a road, crossing where there is no crosswalk, or otherwise lawfully present in a place where a driver should anticipate them, and the driver's duty of due care applies in these situations even where the specific crosswalk right-of-way rule does not.
A driver who strikes a pedestrian through inattention, distraction, or a failure to keep a proper lookout has breached the duty of due care.
The interaction between the pedestrian's conduct and the driver's duty is often where these cases are contested. An insurer may argue that the pedestrian was crossing improperly or was not paying attention, but the driver's duty of due care does not disappear because a pedestrian was somewhere unexpected.
A driver is generally required to take reasonable care to avoid a pedestrian they could have seen, and establishing that the driver failed to do so is central to a pedestrian claim that does not arise in a crosswalk.
The law's recognition that some pedestrians are especially vulnerable adds another dimension to the duty of due care. Drivers are expected to exercise heightened caution around children, who may dart into the road unpredictably, and around older adults and others who may move slowly or be less able to avoid a vehicle.
A driver passing a school, a park, or an area where children are present, or one who sees a person who appears to need extra time to cross, owes a correspondingly greater degree of care.
When a driver strikes a vulnerable pedestrian in circumstances where heightened caution was called for, the failure to exercise that caution strengthens the case that the driver, not the pedestrian, bears responsibility for the crash.
The duty of due care also extends to specific driving maneuvers that put pedestrians at heightened risk. A driver backing out of a parking space or driveway, exiting a parking lot, or pulling out of an alley must look for pedestrians who may be on foot nearby, since these movements often happen at low speed but with reduced visibility.
Similarly, a driver approaching a stopped school bus, an area near a bus stop, or a location where people are loading or unloading from parked cars owes heightened attention to pedestrians who may step into the roadway.
Weather and lighting conditions factor into the duty as well; a driver facing rain, fog, or glare is expected to adjust speed and attentiveness accordingly rather than maintain a pace appropriate only to clear conditions.
None of these circumstances shift the fundamental legal question: whether the driver acted as a reasonably careful person would have under the circumstances actually presented. However, they do illustrate how broadly the duty of due care reaches beyond the basic obligation to watch the road ahead.
Pedestrian accidents in the Columbia area follow recognizable patterns, most involving a driver failing to see or yield to a person on foot.
Drivers turning at intersections who fail to yield to pedestrians in the crosswalk, drivers who fail to stop for pedestrians crossing with the right of way, and drivers who pass a vehicle stopped for a pedestrian cause a significant share of crashes. Distracted driving compounds all of these, since a driver looking at a phone may not see a pedestrian at all.
The places where people walk in Columbia shape where these crashes happen. The downtown area, including the entertainment districts of Five Points and the Vista, draws significant foot traffic, especially in the evenings, and the mix of pedestrians and vehicles, sometimes involving alcohol on the part of drivers, creates risk.
Main Street and the area around the State House and University of South Carolina see heavy pedestrian activity, and corridors like Assembly Street carry pedestrians across busy vehicle lanes.
The nightlife districts deserve particular attention because they combine several risk factors at once. Five Points and the Vista draw crowds on foot in the evening hours, when visibility is reduced and when some drivers on the surrounding roads may be impaired, a combination that makes pedestrian crashes in these areas both more likely and more serious.
University of South Carolina football weekends and other major events swell the foot traffic further, filling sidewalks and crossings near the stadium and downtown with people moving to and from venues.
A driver who fails to anticipate heavy pedestrian activity in these districts, or who is impaired, presents a serious danger to people who are simply walking between destinations. When a pedestrian is struck in one of these areas, the circumstances, including the time of day and any impairment on the driver's part, often bear directly on both fault and the availability of punitive damages.
Other crashes happen along the metro's arterials, where pedestrians crossing wide, busy roads face fast-moving traffic and sometimes limited crossing infrastructure.
Nighttime crashes are especially dangerous because reduced visibility makes it harder for drivers to see pedestrians, though it does not relieve drivers of their duty of due care. Wherever a pedestrian is struck, the central question is usually whether the driver met the duty to yield or to exercise due care, and frequently the driver did not.
The condition of a roadway can itself contribute to a pedestrian crash, which sometimes brings additional responsible parties into the picture.
A wide arterial with crossings spaced far apart, inadequate lighting, malfunctioning pedestrian signals, or no safe place to cross can force pedestrians into dangerous situations, and where a government entity responsible for the road failed to provide reasonable crossing infrastructure, that failure may share in the responsibility for a crash.
This does not excuse a driver who failed to yield, but it can mean that more than one party bears responsibility, and identifying a dangerous road condition as a contributing cause can help both to establish what happened and to reach the coverage available to address a serious injury.
National crash data underscore how serious this risk is in South Carolina specifically. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Traffic Safety Facts report on pedestrians, South Carolina's pedestrian fatality rate per 100,000 population in 2023 was 3.48, well above the national rate of 2.18.
Pedestrians are the most vulnerable people on the road, with nothing to protect them from the force of a vehicle, and the result is that these accidents produce some of the most severe injuries in traffic law.
Even a relatively low-speed impact can cause serious injury to an unprotected person, and a collision at higher speed is frequently catastrophic or fatal. The disparity between a human body and a motor vehicle means the pedestrian absorbs the full force of the collision.
The injuries common to pedestrian crashes are severe. Traumatic brain injuries are a leading cause of death and lasting disability, resulting from the head striking the vehicle or the ground, and spinal cord injuries causing paralysis are tragically common.
Pedestrians frequently suffer multiple fractures, particularly to the legs and pelvis, from the initial impact, along with internal injuries that can be life-threatening. Many pedestrian crashes involve a second impact when the person is thrown to the ground, compounding the injuries.
When a pedestrian is struck in the Columbia area, the most critically injured are taken to Prisma Health Richland Hospital, the Midlands' only Level I trauma center, where the region's most serious trauma is treated.
The medical care for a severely injured pedestrian is often extensive and prolonged, involving multiple surgeries, lengthy rehabilitation, and sometimes permanent disability requiring lifelong care. Because these injuries are so often severe, pedestrian claims frequently involve substantial future medical and lost earnings costs that must be fully accounted for.
The initial impact with the vehicle's bumper and hood frequently injures the legs, pelvis, and torso, while a second impact occurs when the person is thrown onto the vehicle or to the ground, often causing head and spinal injuries.
A pedestrian may then suffer further injury if struck by another vehicle or dragged. This sequence helps explain why pedestrian injuries are so often multiple and severe, involving several body systems at once, and why the treatment and recovery can be so prolonged.
Beyond the immediate physical trauma, severe pedestrian injuries frequently trigger a cascade of secondary medical complications that extend recovery well past the original injury.
Hospitalization and immobility for a long time increase the risk of blood clots, pneumonia, and pressure injuries, particularly for pedestrians who suffer spinal cord damage or multiple fractures that limit movement for weeks or months.
Traumatic brain injuries can produce effects that are not immediately apparent at the scene or even in the emergency room, including cognitive changes, mood disorders, and sensory problems that only become clear as the person attempts to return to work or daily life.
Because these secondary effects can emerge gradually, medical documentation over time, not just the initial trauma report, becomes an important part of showing the full scope of harm a pedestrian crash caused.
A claim built before these effects are fully understood risks undervaluing the true and lasting cost of the injury. It is necessary to capture the full scope of these injuries and their long-term consequences and to understand how the crash unfolded.
South Carolina's modified comparative negligence rule governs pedestrian accident claims, allowing recovery as long as the injured pedestrian was 50 percent or less at fault, reducing the recovery by their percentage, and barring it at 51 percent or more, under Nelson v. Concrete Supply Company (1991).
In pedestrian cases, the driver's insurer might argue that the pedestrian shared responsibility, making the fault analysis a central issue.
The most common defense is that the pedestrian was crossing improperly, was outside a crosswalk, or stepped into traffic, in an effort to assign fault to the injured person. Meeting this defense requires establishing the facts of the crash and the driver's duty.
Where the pedestrian had the right of way in a crosswalk, the driver's failure to yield is a clear violation. Even where the pedestrian was outside a crosswalk, the driver's duty of due care can still establish liability if the driver failed to take reasonable care to avoid a pedestrian they could have seen.
Because every percentage point of fault reduces the recovery and a majority share defeats it, the fault analysis often determines the outcome of a pedestrian case.
The crosswalk right-of-way rule, the duty of due care, the physical evidence, and witness accounts all bear on how fault is allocated, and building the evidence that establishes the driver's responsibility is essential.
The comparative-fault dynamic carries particular weight in pedestrian cases because of how much these claims are often worth. When a catastrophic injury is valued in the hundreds of thousands of dollars or more, the difference between a finding of 10 percent fault and 40 percent fault translates into a very large sum, which gives the driver's insurer a strong incentive to portray the pedestrian as careless.
The response is to ground the case in the concrete duties the driver owed, the right of way in the crosswalk, the prohibition on passing a stopped vehicle, the general duty of due care, and to show through the evidence that the driver breached them.
Insurers evaluating a pedestrian claim tend to point to specific pedestrian conduct, such as wearing dark clothing at night, using a phone while crossing, or crossing mid-block, as evidence of comparative fault. Some of these arguments carry more legal weight than others.
South Carolina law does not require a pedestrian to wear reflective or brightly colored clothing, so an insurer's suggestion that a pedestrian was careless for wearing dark clothes at night does not, by itself, establish a violation of any legal duty, even if it becomes part of the broader factual narrative an insurer tries to construct.
By contrast, evidence that a pedestrian crossed against a clearly functioning signal or disregarded a marked crossing nearby can carry more weight in the fault analysis.
South Carolina law allows an injured pedestrian to recover for the full range of harm a crash causes through economic and non-economic damages, and given the severity of these injuries, compensation can be substantial.
Economic damages cover medical expenses from emergency trauma care through future treatment, lost wages, and reduced or destroyed earning capacity, and for a catastrophic injury, the future components, lifetime medical care and lost earnings, frequently exceed the costs already incurred. Accurately projecting these future costs is essential.
Non-economic damages compensate for the pain, suffering, emotional distress, and loss of enjoyment of life that a serious pedestrian injury causes.
For an injury that permanently changes a person's life, these damages can be substantial, reflecting the profound impact beyond the financial cost. Where a crash is fatal, South Carolina's wrongful death and survival statutes allow the family and estate to recover for the loss.
Punitive damages may be available where the driver's conduct was especially egregious, such as impaired driving or extreme recklessness. They require clear and convincing proof of willful, wanton, or reckless conduct, and South Carolina's cap on them is lifted in certain cases, including where the driver was impaired by alcohol or drugs.
Because pedestrian crashes are so severe and the driver's auto coverage may be insufficient, the available insurance, including the pedestrian's own uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage, can determine what a serious claim can recover, much as in a car accident case.
A serious pedestrian injury can generate costs that exceed the at-fault driver's insurance, which makes identifying every source of coverage central to the claim.
The starting point is the driver's liability policy, but South Carolina's minimum limits are low, and a catastrophic pedestrian injury can far exceed them. When that happens, the search for additional coverage becomes critical to addressing the full harm.
A pedestrian's own auto insurance can be an important source, even though the person was on foot rather than in a car.
Uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage on the pedestrian's own policy, which South Carolina makes available and, in the case of uninsured coverage, mandatory, can apply when the at-fault driver has no insurance or too little, and household policies may allow stacking that increases the amount available.
Many injured pedestrians do not realize their own auto coverage can apply to a crash where they were walking.
Other sources may exist depending on the circumstances. If the driver was working at the time, an employer's commercial policy may respond, and if a government entity bears responsibility for a dangerous crossing or road condition, a claim under the South Carolina Tort Claims Act may be possible, subject to its shorter deadlines and caps.
The mismatch between the severity of pedestrian injuries and the low minimum insurance that many drivers carry makes this analysis especially consequential.
A pedestrian who suffers a brain injury, multiple fractures, and months of rehabilitation can easily incur costs that dwarf a 25,000-dollar minimum liability policy, and without additional coverage, that shortfall falls on the injured person.
This is what uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage addresses, and it is why a pedestrian who carries auto insurance should not assume their own policy is irrelevant simply because they were on foot.
What stands between a catastrophic injury and the resources needed to address it is the complex process of tracing every layer of available coverage, from the driver's policy through the pedestrian's own and any employer or government source.
Your own uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage may apply because that coverage follows you and can apply when a vehicle strikes you as a pedestrian. With South Carolina's low minimum limits, this coverage frequently makes a real difference.
The steps taken after a pedestrian is struck should aim to protect both health and any claim, though a seriously injured pedestrian may be unable to take them, leaving documentation to family or others.
The priority is always medical care, given how severe pedestrian injuries tend to be, and emergency treatment both addresses the injury and creates the record that connects it to the crash. An able victim should accept evaluation even if injuries seem less serious than they may prove to be.
Documenting the crash matters greatly because the driver's insurer will look for ways to assign blame to the pedestrian.
To the extent anyone is able, photographs of the scene, the vehicle, the crosswalk or crossing location, and the surrounding conditions preserve facts that change quickly, and the names and contact information of witnesses preserve accounts that can confirm the driver failed to yield.
In the period that follows, preserving evidence and being cautious with insurers will protect the claim. It is important to keep all medical records and documentation of expenses because it builds the damages case, and the clothing and personal items involved can be evidence.
Because the driver's insurer may argue the pedestrian was crossing improperly, being careful about giving a recorded statement and avoiding a quick settlement before the full injuries are known is important.
Given the severity of pedestrian injuries and the insurer's incentive to shift blame, early legal advice helps preserve the evidence and protect a claim that may be worth a great deal.
| Pedestrian protection under SC law | What it means |
| Crosswalk right of way (§ 56-5-3130) | Drivers must yield to pedestrians crossing in a crosswalk |
| No passing a stopped vehicle at a crosswalk | A driver cannot pass a vehicle stopped for a pedestrian |
| Duty of due care | Drivers must take reasonable care to avoid pedestrians |
| Fault rule | Recover if 50% or less at fault; reduced by your percentage |
Pedestrians have the right of way when crossing in a crosswalk, and drivers must yield. Pedestrians also have duties, but the crosswalk protections are strong, and drivers owe a duty of due care everywhere.
You may still have a claim. A driver's duty of due care requires taking reasonable care to avoid a pedestrian they could have seen, even outside a crosswalk, though fault may be analyzed more closely.
Three years from the date of the crash under S.C. Code § 15-3-530(5). A shorter deadline applies if a government entity is responsible.
Often yes. Your uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage may apply to a pedestrian crash caused by an at-fault driver, which can matter when that driver has little or no insurance.
Yes, as long as you were 50 percent or less at fault. Your recovery is reduced by your percentage of fault, and barred entirely at 51 percent or more.
At the Arndt Law Firm, we build Columbia pedestrian accident cases by gathering all available evidence and identifying every source of coverage to address the injuries. Since attorney Jonathan Arndt previously defended insurers, we understand how these claims are evaluated and how insurers operate; we build each case to pursue the full recovery a serious injury requires.
If you or a loved one was struck by a vehicle in Columbia or Richland County, early legal counsel is essential. For that reason, contact us as soon as possible: the first consultation is free, and we handle these cases on a contingency basis, meaning there are no fees unless there is a recovery.
Last reviewed: June 2026
This page was reviewed by Jonathan S. Arndt, licensed in South Carolina since 2018.
