Helping injured clients understand their rights after a pedestrian accident in Blacksburg, VA.
If a driver struck you while you were walking in Blacksburg, you took the full force of the impact with nothing to protect you, and the bills that follow reflect it: emergency treatment, imaging, surgery, therapy, and time away from work or school. A Blacksburg, VA pedestrian accident lawyer at The Law Offices of Mark T. Hurt pursues the driver’s insurance company for those losses so the cost of someone else’s carelessness does not land on you.
Our firm has represented injured plaintiffs in Southwest Virginia for over 30 years. Consultations are free, and we will give you a direct assessment of your claim.
What makes a pedestrian accident claim different from an ordinary crash case? A person on foot has no seatbelt, no airbag, and no steel frame, so collisions that would dent a bumper instead break bones, damage organs, and cause head trauma. The medical stakes, and the dollar amounts in dispute, run higher from the first day, and the treatment often continues for months after the visible wounds have healed.
The liability fight is different too. Compensation usually comes from the driver’s auto liability coverage, and adjusters defend these claims by blaming the person who was hit: the pedestrian crossed outside the lines, wore dark clothing, or looked at a phone. In a state with fault rules as severe as Virginia’s, those accusations are an attempt to erase the claim entirely. A Blacksburg pedestrian accident attorney anticipates the arguments, gathers the evidence that answers them, and keeps the focus on the driver’s conduct.
Foot traffic is part of daily life here, between downtown, the Huckleberry Trail, and a campus of tens of thousands, and every one of those trips depends on drivers paying attention. Nationwide, NHTSA pedestrian data records 7,080 pedestrians killed and more than 71,000 injured in 2024. The claims our firm handles most often fall into the categories below.
Pedestrian collisions tend to produce the kinds of injuries our firm has concentrated on for more than three decades: fractures, brain trauma, spinal damage, and worse. Firm founder Mark T. Hurt, who holds degrees from the University of Virginia and Duke University School of Law, has built his practice around serious injury claims on the plaintiff’s side. Pedestrian cases fit within our broader role as a personal injury lawyer in Blacksburg, VA, which means related claims, from a passenger’s injuries to a wrongful death, stay with one firm.
Over the years our firm has recovered millions of dollars for clients hurt in vehicle collisions and other serious accidents, including catastrophic injury and wrongful death matters. We prepare each pedestrian case with the documentation and valuation work those results required, because insurers price a claim based on what the firm across the table is prepared to prove.
Liability turns on negligence: the driver owed a duty of reasonable care and broke it by failing to yield, speeding, or not paying attention. Pedestrians have duties too, and Virginia’s contributory negligence rule lets an insurer deny the entire claim if it can pin even a sliver of fault on the person who was hit. Expect arguments about where you crossed, what you wore, and where you were looking; building the record that answers them is most of the work in these cases.
A successful pedestrian claim can compensate:
Where the money comes from matters as much as the categories. The driver’s liability policy is the first source, but it is rarely the only one. A pedestrian’s own auto insurance can apply even though no car of theirs was involved, a resident relative’s policy sometimes adds coverage, and a driver working at the time of the crash may bring an employer’s commercial policy into the case. Identifying every applicable policy early changes what the claim can actually recover.
Head injuries deserve particular attention, because concussions and other brain trauma can show mild early symptoms and serious long-term effects, and the claim must account for both.
The strength of a pedestrian case is usually set early, while the evidence still exists and the medical record is taking shape. The points below come up in nearly every one of these claims, and handling them well in the first weeks pays off months later at the negotiating table.
The sequence below describes how a typical pedestrian claim progresses. Severe injuries lengthen the schedule, because settling before the medical picture is complete almost always shortchanges the client, and pedestrian injuries in particular have a way of revealing their full extent slowly.
A claim can settle at any point along that path. What keeps the timeline honest is the willingness to take the later steps, since insurers track which firms file suit and which ones fold.
A first meeting works fine with partial paperwork, so bring what you have and we will gather the rest.
Most clients arrive with the same common questions about fault, coverage, and timing, and the consultation exists to answer them for your specific situation, free of charge. Expect to walk through the collision in detail, hear an honest evaluation of the liability and coverage picture, and leave with a clear recommendation on whether and how to proceed.
Virginia’s statutes and court system are publicly accessible online, and these sources cover the rules most relevant to an injured pedestrian researching their rights.
Camera footage, skid marks, and witness memories can get lost or fade, and a claim built on preserved evidence negotiates from strength. Your case review with our firm is free and carries no obligation, and we respond to new inquiries quickly. Contact us to talk with a Blacksburg, VA pedestrian accident attorney about your options.
“We hired Mr. Hurt to help settle a worker’s comp injury case for my husband. Mark, Bart, and Mary worked tirelessly to resolve his case and reach a settlement we were pleased with. They were always available to answer questions and returned calls in a timely manner.“
