Pedestrian accident claims in Fresno, California

Officers in Fresno reported 665 crashes involving a pedestrian across 2023, 2024 and 2025, out of 14,923 crashes in all. Pedestrian crashes are a small share of the total everywhere and a large share of the serious injuries, which is the whole problem with judging them by count.

What the reports say people were doing

A California crash report records a "pedestrian action" — the officer's description of where the person was and what they were doing. In Fresno:

So 236 were recorded as crossing in a crosswalk and 227 as crossing outside one. That second number is the one insurers reach for, and it is less useful to them than it looks: an unmarked crosswalk exists at most intersections, and the driver's duty to yield applies there exactly as it does at a painted one. A person crossing at a corner with no paint is very often in a crosswalk as a matter of law, whatever box was ticked. Crosswalk accidents · crossing outside a crosswalk.

Darkness

35% of all Fresno crashes were recorded in darkness or at dusk rather than in daylight. For pedestrian cases that figure does more work than any other single fact on this page, because the defence in a night-time crossing case is always some version of "I could not see them".

The answer to it is that a driver must drive at a speed that is safe for the conditions, and darkness is a condition — that is the basic speed law, not a technicality. And where the street lighting was out or was never there, that is a fact about the public entity that owns the road — a dangerous condition of public property (Gov. Code, § 835), carrying its own much shorter deadline: a written claim presented to the entity within six months (§ 911.2), not the two years people expect. Claims against a government entity.

What proves a Fresno pedestrian case

• The point of impact and where you came to rest, which locates you relative to the crosswalk.
• Whether the intersection has an unmarked crosswalk — a question about geometry, not paint.
• Signal timing plans, which fix the phase against a clock.
• Whether the street lighting was working, which the city can be asked for and which is not kept forever.
• Camera footage from corner businesses, buses and doorbell cameras. Days, not weeks.

Hit-and-run pedestrian claims · children and school zones · older adults.

A question about Fresno

How many crashes in Fresno happened in the dark?

35% of all crashes officers reported in Fresno across 2023, 2024 and 2025 happened in darkness or at dusk, counting every crash and not only those involving someone on foot. Lighting is recorded on the report as a fact about conditions, not as a finding about fault. It matters in a pedestrian claim because it is one of the first things a driver's insurer raises — whether the person could be seen — and because street lighting is the responsibility of whoever maintains the road.

The general questions — how fault is decided, what happens when the other driver has no insurance, whether being partly at fault ends a claim — are answered once on the pedestrian accidents page rather than repeated on every city page.

Sources: counts from the California Crash Reporting System (CCRS), California Highway Patrol, 2023, 2024 and 2025 exports, retrieved 2026-09-06. Counts are of reported crashes and are not adjusted for exposure; method and limitations. Crosswalk duties: Veh. Code, § 21950; crossing elsewhere: § 21954; basic speed law: § 22350; dangerous condition of public property: Gov. Code, § 835; government claim deadline: § 911.2.

This is general information, not legal advice.