Car accident claims in Pasadena, California

Officers in Pasadena reported 5,262 crashes between vehicles, or involving a single vehicle, across 2023, 2024 and 2025 — what most people mean by a car accident. That is out of 5,648 crashes in total; the rest involved a pedestrian or a cyclist, which are different claims and are covered on their own pages.

What kind of crashes these were

The reports break down like this. A collision type is the officer's description of the geometry, and it matters because the geometry is usually the first argument about fault.

Striking a bicycle is not one of the categories. The crash report records a collision type — the geometry — and cycling is not a geometry, so a driver hitting a cyclist is recorded under whichever shape the collision took. Bicycle involvement is a separate field on the report, and Pasadena records 139 of those. Bicycle accidents.

Rear-end crashes lead the list, as they do almost everywhere. They are also the ones insurers treat as routine and injured people find hardest. The adjuster — the insurance company employee who decides what a claim is worth — starts from the photographs of the car. A low-speed rear-end often leaves a bumper barely marked, and a neck injury that keeps someone off work for months leaves no mark at all, so the file looks minor before anyone reads a medical record. Rear-end collisions.

The sections officers cite in Pasadena

These are the Vehicle Code sections officers most often recorded as the primary collision factor, with what each one means in plain terms.

• Veh. Code, § 22350 — Basic speed law, on 1,693 reports. Driving faster than was safe for the conditions — which is not the same as breaking the posted limit, and is why a driver can be at fault for speeding at 30 in a 35.
• Veh. Code, § 22107 — Unsafe turn or lane change, on 826 reports. Turning or changing lanes before it was safe to do so, or without signalling when another vehicle could be affected.
• Veh. Code, § 21658, subd. (a) — Failing to stay in one lane, on 588 reports. Not staying as nearly as practical within a single marked lane, or leaving the lane before it was safe.

None of that decides anything. It is the officer's opinion at the roadside, and it is the opinion an adjuster will quote at you first. Dealing with the adjuster · recorded statements.

21% of Pasadena crash reports were hit-and-run — 1,168 reports, 133 of them classed as a felony. The median California city sits at 22%.

If the driver was never found, the claim usually runs through your own uninsured motorist coverage, and the notice deadlines there are short. Uninsured motorist claims.

Where they cluster

The junctions inside Pasadena carrying the most reported crashes were Fair Oaks Av & Washington Bl (22), Los Robles Av & Washington Bl (20), Pasadena Av & State St (19), Lake Av & Washington Bl (19) and Lake Av & Villa St (18). The full Pasadena junction list.

A question about Pasadena

Does it help my claim that the crash was at one of Pasadena's worst intersections?

Not by itself. Fair Oaks Av & Washington Bl carried 22 reported crashes across 2023, 2024 and 2025, more than any other junction in Pasadena, but a count of crashes at a corner is not evidence about yours. It says the place is busy. What decides a claim is what happened in your collision — the signal phase, the right of way, the physical evidence. A history of crashes can matter in a claim against the city or the county for the design of the road, which is a different case with a much shorter deadline.

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 car 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. The cited sections above link to their current text on leginfo.

This is general information, not legal advice.