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By David Gammill · Last reviewed: August 23, 2026
Vehicle Code § 21950 is California’s pedestrian right-of-way law. It requires drivers to yield to a pedestrian crossing the street in any marked crosswalk, or in any unmarked crosswalk at an intersection, and to slow down and use all due care to keep that person safe. Most drivers know the first half of that rule. Far fewer know the second half, or that a legal crosswalk exists at almost every corner in California whether or not anything is painted on the pavement. After a pedestrian is hit, this one section usually frames the entire fight over fault.
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Here are the section’s four core subdivisions, quoted in full. A fifth subdivision, added in 2023, deals only with when police may stop a pedestrian; it is quoted in the 2023-changes section below.
(a) The driver of a vehicle shall yield the right-of-way to a pedestrian crossing the roadway within any marked crosswalk or within any unmarked crosswalk at an intersection, except as otherwise provided in this chapter.
(b) This section does not relieve a pedestrian from the duty of using due care for their safety. No pedestrian may suddenly leave a curb or other place of safety and walk or run into the path of a vehicle that is so close as to constitute an immediate hazard. No pedestrian may unnecessarily stop or delay traffic while in a marked or unmarked crosswalk.
(c) The driver of a vehicle approaching a pedestrian within any marked or unmarked crosswalk shall exercise all due care and shall reduce the speed of the vehicle or take any other action relating to the operation of the vehicle as necessary to safeguard the safety of the pedestrian.
(d) Subdivision (b) does not relieve a driver of a vehicle from the duty of exercising due care for the safety of any pedestrian within any marked crosswalk or within any unmarked crosswalk at an intersection.
Source: Cal. Veh. Code § 21950, California Legislative Information (verified August 21, 2026).
In plain English: when a person is crossing in a crosswalk, the driver must let them cross. But the statute demands more than yielding. Subdivision (c) requires an approaching driver to exercise “all due care”: slow down, cover the brake, and do whatever the moment requires to keep the pedestrian safe. Pedestrians have duties too, under subdivision (b), and drivers and insurers lean on those duties hard. Subdivision (d) answers them in advance: nothing a pedestrian does wrong erases the driver’s own duty of care.
Vehicle Code § 275 defines two kinds. A marked crosswalk is any part of the road “distinctly indicated for pedestrian crossing by lines or other markings.” An unmarked crosswalk is invisible but just as legal: at any intersection where the streets meet at roughly right angles, the law extends the boundary lines of the sidewalks straight across the road, and the strip between those lines is a crosswalk, no paint required. There are two exceptions: the extension of an alley across a street does not create a crosswalk, and there is no crosswalk where the local authority has posted signs prohibiting crossing.
This matters because “there was no crosswalk there” is one of the first things injured pedestrians hear from an insurance adjuster. At an ordinary intersection, that statement is usually wrong as a matter of law. If you were crossing at a corner, you were very likely in a crosswalk, whether or not you could see one.
No, and it is better to know this now than to hear it first from the other side. Subdivision (b) puts two duties on pedestrians: do not suddenly leave the curb or another place of safety and step into the path of a car that is too close to stop, and do not unnecessarily stop or delay traffic while in the crosswalk. California courts describe the crosswalk right-of-way as preferential, not absolute: the pedestrian gets the preference, but both people still owe care. In Byrne v. City and County of San Francisco (1980), the Court of Appeal held that a driver who technically violated § 21950 was not automatically negligent where the driver acted reasonably and the pedestrian stepped out from behind a stopped bus without looking.
What that means in practice: a crosswalk case is rarely won by pointing at the statute and stopping. It is won with evidence about what the driver could see, how fast they were going, and what each person did in the seconds before impact.
Nearly every crosswalk case meets the same defense: the pedestrian “darted out” and the driver “never had a chance.” California law gives injured pedestrians two strong answers.
First, negligence per se. Under Evidence Code § 669, a driver is presumed negligent when four things are true: they violated a statute, the violation caused the injury, the injury is the kind the statute was written to prevent, and the injured person is someone the statute was written to protect. Section 21950 exists precisely to protect people crossing the street from being hit by cars. So when the evidence shows the driver failed to yield or failed to slow and use due care, the law presumes negligence, and the burden shifts to the driver to show they acted as a reasonably careful person trying to follow the law. That presumption can be rebutted, which is exactly what happened in Byrne, so the physical evidence still decides the case. California’s pattern jury instructions make both duties concrete: CACI No. 710 tells jurors that both drivers and pedestrians in a crosswalk must use reasonable care, and CACI No. 700 tells them every driver must keep a lookout for pedestrians, obstacles, and other vehicles.
Second, comparative negligence. California divides fault in percentages, and a pedestrian’s share reduces the recovery rather than eliminating it. A pedestrian found 30 percent at fault for crossing against a flashing hand still recovers 70 percent of their damages. The percentages are built from evidence: the driver’s speed for the conditions (our guide to Vehicle Code § 22350, California’s basic speed law, explains why even a driver under the posted limit can be driving unlawfully fast), camera and dashcam footage, the vehicle’s recorded event data, skid and impact physics, and witness accounts. If speed was part of your crash, our Torrance speeding accident page covers how that evidence gets preserved and used.
You may still have a case. Vehicle Code § 21954 says a pedestrian crossing outside a crosswalk must yield to vehicles close enough to be an immediate hazard, but the same section says, in subdivision (b), that this “shall not relieve the driver of a vehicle from the duty to exercise due care for the safety of any pedestrian upon a roadway.” A driver who had time and room to see you, slow down, or move over still had a duty to do it. Crossing mid-block usually means the pedestrian carries a percentage of fault, and under comparative negligence that percentage reduces the recovery; it does not zero it out.
Partly, and the change is widely misunderstood. The Freedom to Walk Act (AB 2147) took effect January 1, 2023 and added subdivision (e) to § 21950:
(e)(1) A peace officer, as defined in Chapter 4.5 (commencing with Section 830) of Title 3 of Part 2 of the Penal Code, shall not stop a pedestrian for a violation of this section unless a reasonably careful person would realize there is an immediate danger of a collision with a moving vehicle or other device moving exclusively by human power.
In other words, police may no longer ticket the safe crossing itself. But the act changed enforcement, not civil responsibility. Paragraphs (2) and (3) of the same subdivision say expressly that pedestrians still owe due care for their own safety and drivers still owe due care to every pedestrian in the roadway. For injury cases the practical point cuts both ways: the absence of a jaywalking ticket does not prove the pedestrian was blameless, and the presence of one was never required to hold a negligent driver responsible. The civil case turns on the evidence, exactly as it did before 2023.
Pedestrian injuries are a measurable part of Torrance’s crash picture. In 2023, 43 pedestrians were among the 647 people killed or injured in the city’s traffic collisions (California Office of Traffic Safety, Torrance 2023 crash rankings, built from SWITRS, the state’s collision database). The settings are the everyday ones: signalized crossings on the big commercial boulevards, school zones at drop-off and pickup, shopping-center driveways that cut across sidewalks, and residential corners where every intersection holds an unmarked crosswalk most drivers have never heard of.
One more South Bay reality: when a crossing itself was part of the problem, a faded crosswalk, a signal that gave too little crossing time, a corner with blocked sight lines, the responsible party may be a city, the county, or the state, not just the driver. Our page on dangerous roads and intersections in Torrance maps where these conditions concentrate, and our guide to Government Code § 835, California’s dangerous-condition law, explains when a public entity answers for a hazardous crossing. Claims against public entities run on a much shorter clock and their own rules; our plain-English guide to the California government claim deadline explains the six-month claim requirement.
A § 21950 violation is proven inside your underlying injury case, so the usual clocks govern: most California pedestrian injury lawsuits must be filed within two years under CCP § 335.1, California’s two-year statute of limitations, and if a public entity may share responsibility, the written government claim is due within six months. The evidence clock is far shorter than either: intersection and storefront camera footage is often overwritten within days, and vehicle event data can vanish when a car is repaired or salvaged. Many of the first steps in our guide to what to do after a Torrance crash apply equally when the person hit was on foot.
Yes. The text quoted above reflects California law as of the review date at the top of this page, verified against the official California Legislative Information site and independent mirrors. The section’s most recent substantive change is the Freedom to Walk Act’s subdivision (e), effective January 1, 2023.
Free guide: Crash Course: A California Car Accident Guide (2026). Every deadline, the insurance realities, and the first steps that protect your claim, in one plain-English PDF.
Crosswalk cases are decided by evidence that disappears fast: camera footage, vehicle data, and fresh witness memories. If you or someone you love was hit by a car in Torrance or the South Bay, start with our Torrance car accident attorney page. Get your free case evaluation or call 310-750-4149. There are no upfront legal fees; a fee is collected only if we win, under a written contingency fee agreement that complies with California law.
Disclaimer: This article is educational and informational in nature. It does not constitute legal advice for any specific situation, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Every case turns on its own facts, and no result is guaranteed; consult a licensed California attorney about your own circumstances.
