Pedestrian accidents can happen along busy stretches like Route 22, Morris Avenue, and Stuyvesant Avenue in Union Township, where heavy traffic and hurried commuters create real danger for anyone on foot.
A pedestrian struck by a vehicle almost always bears the worst injuries, and the law reflects that vulnerability in several important ways that work in the injured person's favor.
The Law Offices of Sander Budanitsky, L.L.C. represents pedestrians injured throughout Union Township and Union County, helping them pursue compensation to which they may be entitled under the law. Call our Roselle office at (908) 241-3445 or (908) 241-4595 for a free consultation.
New Jersey's verbal threshold restricts a driver's right to recover pain-and-suffering damages, limiting it to injuries that fit one of six statutory categories. That restriction is tied to the auto coverage a driver is required to carry, and a pedestrian, who is not driving, is generally not required to carry it, the same way a cyclist is not.
Whether a pedestrian has to clear New Jersey's verbal threshold depends on the pedestrian's own auto insurance, not on the fact that they were walking. Under N.J.S.A. 39:6A-8(a), the limitation on lawsuit option binds a person who is required to carry PIP on an automobile and whose policy elected that option, and N.J.S.A. 39:6A-4 extends PIP to the named insured and resident family members injured as a pedestrian.
So a pedestrian who owns a New Jersey car, or who lives in a household with one, is generally held to the same six category test as a driver and must serve a treating physician's certification of permanent injury within 60 days of the defendant's answer. A pedestrian with no auto policy in the household elected nothing and is generally free of the threshold.
If the vehicle that struck you was public, a different threshold applies, and it is not the verbal threshold. Under N.J.S.A. 59:9-2(d), you cannot recover pain and suffering damages from a public entity or public employee unless you sustained a permanent loss of a bodily function, permanent disfigurement or dismemberment, and your medical treatment expenses exceed $3,600.
Punitive damages are not available against a public entity at all under N.J.S.A. 59:9-2(c). A pedestrian struck by an NJ Transit bus or a municipal vehicle therefore faces a higher bar than one struck by a private car, which is another reason to identify the vehicle immediately.
A pedestrian injury claim generally must be filed within two years of the crash under N.J.S.A. 2A:14-2, and a court will normally dismiss a late claim. In most pedestrian cases involving a private vehicle, that two-year deadline applies, though waiting until it approaches makes the perishable scene evidence far harder to recover.
The timing changes if the vehicle that struck the pedestrian was a public vehicle, such as an NJ Transit bus or a municipal vehicle. The Tort Claims Act then requires a written notice of claim within ninety days of accrual under N.J.S.A. 59:8-8. If ninety days have already passed, the claim is not automatically over.
Under N.J.S.A. 59:8-9, a judge of the Superior Court may permit a late notice of claim at any time within one year of the date the claim accrued, on affidavits showing extraordinary circumstances for the delay and where the public entity has not been substantially prejudiced. That motion has to be made within that one year, and a suit against a public entity can never be filed more than two years after accrual, so the time to ask is now rather than later.
The ninety-day notice requirement is not limited to NJ Transit. It applies to any public entity: the Township of Union and Union County; the State; NJDOT for roads such as Route 22 and Route 82, known locally as Morris Avenue; and public institutions such as Kean University and the vehicles they operate. It also applies where the claim concerns how a crossing, a signal, or a roadway was designed, maintained, or lit, not only who was behind the wheel.
New Jersey law gives pedestrians significant protection at crosswalks, and that protection often shapes the fault analysis. Under N.J.S.A. 39:4-36, a driver must stop and remain stopped for a pedestrian crossing within a marked crosswalk once the pedestrian is upon, or within one lane of, the half of the roadway the driver is traveling on or turning onto.
At an unmarked crosswalk at an intersection, the duty is to yield the right of way, slowing down or stopping if necessary. Which kind of crossing you were in and where in the roadway you had reached when the driver should have stopped are often the contested questions on a wide road like Route 22.
A driver who fails to yield to a pedestrian in a crosswalk has violated the statute, and that violation is strong evidence of negligence. A documented violation of the crosswalk statute often shifts the fault analysis decisively toward the driver.
Pedestrians also have responsibilities, including crossing at crosswalks where available and not suddenly stepping off a curb into the path of a vehicle that cannot stop. The interplay between the driver's duty to yield and the pedestrian's duty to cross carefully is often the point at which a pedestrian case is contested. Establishing that the driver failed to yield the right of way where the law required it is central to the pedestrian's claim.
Union Center, the downtown commercial district at Morris Avenue and Stuyvesant Avenue, draws heavy foot traffic across signal-dense streets shared with cars and buses, while the Route 22 retail corridor sends shoppers crossing wide, fast-moving lanes between big-box stores and parking lots not designed with walkers in mind. Both settings produce the driver-pedestrian conflicts that lead to serious and sometimes fatal injuries.
Consider a pedestrian struck in a Union Center crosswalk by a car accident caused by a driver turning across Morris Avenue, or a shopper hit while crossing toward a Route 22 store. The driver's insurer may argue that the pedestrian crossed against the signal or stepped out suddenly, attempting to shift the fault and reduce the recovery. Answering that depends on the signal timing, video from the businesses lining the corridor, and witness accounts, evidence that fades quickly.
Most pedestrians injured in Union Township are first taken to the emergency department at Overlook Medical Center's Union Campus on Galloping Hill Road. Union County has no designated trauma center, so the most seriously injured, those with head, chest, or multiple system trauma, are transported or transferred to University Hospital in Newark, the state-designated Level I trauma center for northern New Jersey.
A pedestrian's recovery is governed by the same comparative-negligence rule as other personal injury claims, the 51 percent bar at N.J.S.A. 2A:15-5.1. A pedestrian recovers as long as their share of fault is not greater than the driver's, meaning fifty percent or less, with the recovery reduced by that share. At fifty-one percent, recovery is barred.
The defense has a strong incentive to assign as much fault as possible to the pedestrian, arguing they crossed against a signal, crossed outside a crosswalk, or were distracted. Even a pedestrian found partly at fault still recovers, as long as their share does not exceed 50 percent of the total.
The objective evidence, the location of the impact, the signal timing, and the witness accounts, are what hold the allocation where the facts put it.
New Jersey State Police recorded 176 pedestrian deaths in 2025, down from 230 in 2024, out of 578 traffic deaths statewide that year. Pedestrians were still close to a third of everyone killed on New Jersey roads. Closer to home, Union County saw 26 fatal crashes and 28 traffic deaths in 2025.
Union County contributes to that toll, and the township's busy corridors are part of the reason. Wide arterials like Route 22 are built for vehicle speed rather than pedestrian safety, and even a moderate-speed impact can cause catastrophic or fatal injury to a person on foot.
Pedestrian crashes follow recognizable patterns, and those patterns often point to the fault. A driver turning across a crosswalk who fails to yield, a driver running a red light or stop sign, a vehicle backing out of a parking space or driveway, and a driver speeding through a downtown area all place a pedestrian in danger. Many of these crashes occur where pedestrians are supposed to be safest: within marked crosswalks at intersections.
In Union Center, the conflict comes from turning vehicles in a signal-dense downtown shared with heavy foot traffic, while along Route 22, the danger is the sheer speed and width of the road and the lack of pedestrian infrastructure between retail destinations. Distracted driving compounds the danger in both of these settings.
The foundation of the pedestrian's claim is establishing how a particular crash occurred and whether the driver failed in a duty imposed by law.
A pedestrian struck by a vehicle has no protection, and the injuries reflect that exposure. Head injuries, including traumatic brain injury, are a constant risk, along with spinal-cord damage, multiple fractures of the legs and pelvis, internal organ injuries, and the severe harm that comes from a secondary impact with the pavement or another vehicle. Many of these injuries carry lifelong consequences.
Because injuries are often severe, a pedestrian claim must account for the full course of treatment and recovery rather than initial care alone. A seriously injured pedestrian from a Union Township crash is treated at the regional trauma center and may face surgery, extended rehabilitation, and permanent limitations. Complete documentation is important to build a strong claim.
Pedestrians are too often the victims of hit-and-run drivers, and a person struck by a driver who flees faces the question of how to recover when the at-fault party cannot be identified.
Your own policy may respond in two ways. Uninsured motorist coverage applies when the driver flees and is never identified, or carries no insurance at all. Underinsured motorist coverage applies when the driver is insured but for less than your losses, which is the common situation where a driver carries minimum limits and a pedestrian has catastrophic injuries.
Both are claims against your own insurer under your own policy's terms, including its reporting requirements and its consent to settle condition, and if your policy elected the limitation on lawsuit option, that election applies to your uninsured and underinsured motorist claim as well.
Your medical bills after a pedestrian crash are paid first by personal injury protection, not by the driver's liability insurance. Under N.J.S.A. 39:6A-4, if you or a family member in your household carries a New Jersey auto policy, that policy pays your PIP even though you were on foot.
If there is no household policy, PIP comes from the policy covering the vehicle that struck you, and if there is none, from the Unsatisfied Claim and Judgment Fund through PLIGA under N.J.S.A. 39:6-86.1, up to $250,000 in medical expenses. Which policy pays also determines whether the verbal threshold applies to your case, so the two questions are answered together.
Two groups face heightened pedestrian risk and bring particular considerations to a claim. Children, who may dart into a roadway and cannot be held to an adult's judgment, are owed special vigilance by drivers, who must anticipate their presence near schools, parks, and residential streets.
The two-year filing deadline is generally tolled until an injured child turns eighteen. In comparative-fault analysis, a young child's conduct is judged by a very different standard than an adult's, recognizing a child's limited ability to gauge traffic conditions.
A child's two-year deadline to sue a private driver does not begin until the child's eighteenth birthday. That tolling does not carry over to a claim against a public entity.
Where the vehicle was public, or where the claim is against a public entity such as the township, the county, the State or a public university, a notice of claim still has to be presented within ninety days under N.J.S.A. 59:8-8, normally by a parent or guardian, and the only relief for a late notice is a motion under N.J.S.A. 59:8-9 within one year of the crash. A parent should not wait on a child's behalf.
Older pedestrians are more likely to be seriously hurt or killed when struck, because they are more physically vulnerable and may move more slowly through a crossing than a signal allows. The injuries to an older pedestrian are often catastrophic, and the long-term care they require belongs in the claim.
For both groups, the driver's heightened duty to anticipate and avoid vulnerable pedestrians is a central theme, and documenting the full scope of the harm is essential to a fair recovery.
A pedestrian claim has two sides. Economic damages cover past and future medical treatment, lost wages, lost earning capacity and the cost of long-term or life care, and they are recoverable regardless of any threshold.
Noneconomic damages cover pain, suffering, disability, impairment and loss of enjoyment of life, and these are what the verbal threshold and, in a public entity case, N.J.S.A. 59:9-2(d) can limit. A spouse may also have a per quod claim for loss of services and companionship. Where the pedestrian dies, the wrongful death claim covers the family's pecuniary losses.
If a pedestrian dies of the injuries, the family's wrongful death claim runs two years from the date of death, which is not always the date of the crash. Where a public vehicle or a public entity is involved, the ninety-day notice of claim requirement applies to the death claim in the same way it applies to an injury claim.
Fault in a pedestrian case is established from evidence, and the proof must overcome the bias that often falls on the person who was struck. The point of impact, the vehicle damage, the resting positions, the signal timing at the intersection, any video from nearby businesses or traffic cameras, and independent witness accounts together establish how the crash happened and whether the driver failed in the duty to yield.
New Jersey gives a pedestrian more than an argument here. Under N.J.S.A. 39:4-36(d), where a vehicle and a pedestrian collide within a marked crosswalk, or at an unmarked crosswalk at an intersection, there is a permissive inference that the driver did not exercise due care for the safety of the pedestrian, and the jury is instructed on that inference under Model Civil Jury Charge 5.32C.
The jury may draw it. That is why establishing where the impact happened is usually worth more than any other single fact in a pedestrian case.
In a disputed case, this proof answers the driver's version of events. A reconstruction based on the physical evidence can show that the pedestrian was within a crosswalk and that the driver turned or proceeded into them, rebutting the claim that the pedestrian darted out or crossed against the signal.
Much of this evidence degrades quickly; the scene is cleared, video is overwritten, and memories shift, so securing it early allows the driver's failure to yield to be established rather than merely argued.
After a pedestrian crash, the driver's insurer works to limit what it pays, and its tactics usually rest on shifting fault to the pedestrian. A common approach is to argue that the pedestrian crossed against the signal, crossed outside a crosswalk, was distracted, or wore dark clothing, since assigning fault to the pedestrian directly reduces what the insurer must pay under the comparative-negligence rule.
The insurer may also dispute the severity of the injuries or extend an early settlement offer before the full extent of the harm is known. Recognizing these tactics is the first defense against them.
The objective evidence, the crosswalk and signal facts, the physical proof, and the witness accounts answer the attempt to blame the pedestrian, and an early offer is best evaluated only after the full scope of a serious injury is understood, since accepting it prematurely can foreclose recovery for harm that becomes clear later.
The steps taken after a pedestrian crash protect both health and the claim, even when serious injuries make that difficult.
Getting medical attention promptly treats the injury and creates the record that ties it to the crash, and ensuring the police respond and document the scene creates an official account. When the injured person is able, photograph the scene, the vehicle, and the crossing to capture details before they disappear.
In the days that follow, identifying any witnesses, noting the signal and crosswalk conditions, and being cautious about recorded statements and early settlement offers from the driver's insurer all help protect the claim.
Drivers bear a special responsibility toward pedestrians that goes beyond simply obeying traffic signals.
A driver's duty toward pedestrians comes from two places. New Jersey's careless driving statute, N.J.S.A. 39:4-97, forbids driving without due caution and circumspection, and because that statute incorporates the common law standard of care, the New Jersey Supreme Court held in Eaton v. Eaton, 119 N.J. 628 (1990), that proof of a violation is proof of negligence itself.
At crosswalks, N.J.S.A. 39:4-36(d) adds a permissive inference that a driver who strikes a pedestrian there failed to exercise due care for the pedestrian's safety. Together, they answer the familiar defense that the pedestrian appeared from nowhere.
In settings like Union Center, where foot traffic is constant, or along the Route 22 retail strip, where shoppers cross between destinations, drivers are on notice that pedestrians will be present and must drive accordingly.
The rules protecting pedestrians are statewide, but a pedestrian crash occurs at a specific crossing and is heard in a specific court; familiarity with both adds value.
Knowing where pedestrians are most at risk in Union Township, the Union Center crosswalks at Morris and Stuyvesant Avenues, the Route 22 retail crossings, and the areas around Kean University where students walk, helps in understanding how a particular crash occurred and in anticipating the defense.
It also reaches the institutions a serious case moves through, from University Hospital in Newark, the regional trauma center that treats the most gravely injured, to the Union County Courthouse in Elizabeth, where a contested claim proceeds in the Union Vicinage. Pairing the command of New Jersey's pedestrian and crosswalk law with attention to the specific facts of a Union Township crash allows the claim to be handled on its real circumstances.
Yes, but it depends on the pedestrian’s own insurance policy.
Two years from the crash under N.J.S.A. 2A:14-2. If a public vehicle was involved, a written notice of claim must be filed within 90 days.
You can still recover as long as your share of fault is not more than fifty percent. Your recovery is reduced by your percentage of fault.
Your own uninsured motorist coverage may respond to a hit-and-run. Promptly reporting the crash to the police supports both the search for the driver and the claim.
The location of the impact, the timing of the signal, any video from nearby businesses, and witness accounts. This evidence fades quickly, so securing it early is important.
When a driver hits someone on foot, New Jersey law puts the burden on the driver to prove they were paying attention and using reasonable care, not on the pedestrian to prove the obvious. The Law Offices of Sander Budanitsky, L.L.C. builds pedestrian claims around that duty of care, working to show how the driver's actions fell short, whether that means speeding, failing to yield at a crosswalk, or simply not looking.
Attorney Sander Budanitsky reviews the police report, crash-scene evidence, and any available witness accounts early, then explains in plain terms what your case looks like and what to expect next.
Pedestrian cases move fast in the early days, and that's usually where they're won or lost. Skid marks fade, surveillance footage gets overwritten, and witnesses become harder to track down the longer you wait. Our firm moves quickly to lock down that evidence while also connecting your injuries to your medical records, since insurance adjusters look for any gap in treatment to argue your injuries weren't serious.
Our firm represents injured pedestrians throughout Union Township and Union County. Attorney Sander Budanitsky has represented injured New Jersey clients since 1996 and is admitted in both New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Contact us to discuss your case and how the rules above apply to your situation.
Last reviewed: September 2026. This page was reviewed by Sander Budanitsky, licensed in New Jersey since 1996. It is provided for general information and is not legal advice. Consult a licensed New Jersey attorney for guidance specific to your situation.
The Law Offices of Sander Budanitsky, L.L.C. welcomes calls from potential clients and from attorneys looking to refer or co-counsel a matter. Whether it is an injury claim, a civil dispute, a criminal charge, or an immigration question, the first conversation is free and there is no obligation to hire the firm afterward.
Call the Roselle, New Jersey office at (908) 241-3445 or the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania office at (215) 545-2300. You can also send the details through the contact form and someone from the office will get back to you. Calls are answered 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
