Child Pedestrian Accident Claims in Arizona: A Parent’s Guide

A child gets hit by a car. In the first 72 hours, most parents are trying to survive an ER visit and figure out whether their kid is really okay. Nobody is thinking about evidence preservation, comparative fault, or minor settlement procedure. That’s why this guide exists. If you’re dealing with a child pedestrian accident claim in Arizona, here’s what actually matters, in the order it matters.

We handle these cases at our firm. They are different from adult pedestrian claims in real, specific ways: the standard of care applied to a child, how the statute of limitations works, how damages get calculated across a full life, and how the court supervises any settlement. Miss those differences and you leave money and protection on the table.

What counts as a child pedestrian accident in Arizona

For legal purposes, a child pedestrian accident is any collision where a person under 18 is on foot (or on a non-motorized scooter, skates, or similar) and gets struck by a motor vehicle. The vehicle doesn’t have to be moving fast. Some of the worst injuries we see happen at 5 to 10 mph, because a bumper hits a small child at head or chest height instead of leg height.

The claim is a negligence claim against the driver. Sometimes it’s also a claim against a second party: an employer if the driver was working, a rideshare company if the driver was on the app, a school-bus contractor, or a property owner whose landscaping or signage blocked the sightline. Identifying every potential defendant early is one of the highest-leverage things a lawyer does in these cases.

Where these crashes happen: school zones, driveways, and neighborhoods

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration tracks pedestrian crashes nationally, and the patterns for children are consistent (see NHTSA pedestrian safety). In Phoenix and across Arizona, the scenarios we see most often are:

• School-zone crossings at pickup and dropoff. Drivers running late, right-turn-on-red without looking, blocking crosswalks, and passing stopped school buses.
• Residential driveway back-overs. A parent, neighbor, or delivery driver backs out of a driveway and doesn’t see a small child behind the vehicle. Backup cameras have helped, but they don’t eliminate the problem.
• Ice cream truck and mid-block darts. A child crosses mid-block toward something they want, often from between parked cars where the driver has no line of sight until impact.
• Uncontrolled neighborhood intersections. Streets without stop signs, marked crosswalks, or speed enforcement, where drivers go 35 in a 25.
• Right-turn-on-red at school pickup. A driver looks left for oncoming traffic, then turns right without ever looking at the crosswalk where a child is stepping off the curb.

Arizona law imposes a heightened duty on drivers in school zones and near where children are known to be present. Under A.R.S. § 28-797, drivers must obey posted school-zone speed limits when children are present, and case law has long held that drivers should anticipate children may act unpredictably, dart from between parked cars, and misjudge traffic. A driver who plows through a residential street at 40 mph and hits a kid does not get to say “the child came out of nowhere.” That’s exactly the risk the heightened duty is designed to address. For a broader look at how crosswalk cases work, see our page on crosswalk accidents in Phoenix.

How Arizona treats a child’s conduct: the age-appropriate standard

This is where child pedestrian cases diverge sharply from adult cases.

Arizona applies an age-appropriate standard of care to children. A young child (generally under 7) is typically not held to an adult negligence standard at all. Older minors are judged against what a reasonable child of similar age, intelligence, and experience would do under the same circumstances. This tracks the Restatement (Second) of Torts § 283A and is well-established in Arizona case law.

Why this matters: the driver’s insurance adjuster will almost always try to shift some fault to the child. “She darted into the street.” “He wasn’t in the crosswalk.” “She should have looked.” The age-appropriate standard limits how far that argument can go. A 5-year-old cannot be legally negligent for running toward an ice cream truck. A 10-year-old is not judged by whether an adult would have looked twice, but by what a reasonable 10-year-old would do.

Getting that standard applied correctly, and pushing back on adjusters who try to treat a child like a miniature adult, is a core part of the case.

How comparative fault works when a child is hurt

Arizona is a pure comparative fault state under A.R.S. § 12-2505 (see the statute at azleg.gov). Any percentage of fault assigned to the injured person reduces their recovery by that percentage. If a jury finds the child 20% at fault and the driver 80% at fault, the child recovers 80% of proven damages.

Two important points for child cases:

1. The age-appropriate standard limits how much fault can attach to the child. Adjusters know Arizona is a pure comparative fault state and try to load fault onto the child to knock down the payout. The response is to invoke the age-appropriate standard early and often, and to develop the driver’s conduct fully (speed, distraction, sightlines, phone use).
2. Parental negligent supervision is a separate issue. The defense may argue the parent was negligent in supervising the child. In Arizona, that argument is generally asserted against the parent’s own claim (for example, a parent’s claim for medical expenses paid), not imputed to bar the child’s independent recovery. In other words, even if a defense lawyer thinks a parent should have been holding a toddler’s hand, that does not wipe out the child’s claim for the child’s injuries.

For a deeper explanation of how the comparative fault percentages work in practice, see Arizona’s comparative negligence rule.

What parents should do in the first 72 hours

Practical, in order:

1. Call 911 and get a police report. Do this even if the driver wants to “handle it privately.” No report, no independent record.
2. Get pediatric ER evaluation, even if your child seems fine. Kids mask symptoms. Internal injuries, concussions, and growth plate damage often do not show up at the scene. A pediatric ER note documenting the mechanism of injury is critical evidence and critical medicine.
3. Photograph the scene and the vehicle. Skid marks, sightline obstructions, signage, the child’s position, damage to the car (paint transfer at bumper height tells a story).
4. Get names and phone numbers of every witness. Other parents at pickup, neighbors, the crossing guard, drivers who stopped. Witnesses disappear within 48 hours.
5. Preserve the child’s clothing and shoes. Do not wash them. Paint transfer, tire tread patterns, and tear patterns are evidence.
6. Decline any recorded statement to the driver’s insurer. They will call within a day or two, sound sympathetic, and ask for a “quick statement to process the claim.” Politely decline. You are not required to give one.
7. Send preservation letters within days, not weeks. Vehicle EDR (“black box”) data, driver phone records, nearby home and school surveillance, and school-bus dashcam footage all get overwritten or lost fast. A lawyer sends formal preservation letters to lock this evidence down. NHTSA’s Special Crash Investigations program documents how EDR data, scene analysis, medical records, and interviews are used to reconstruct pediatric pedestrian crashes; the same methods apply in civil claims.
8. Do not post about the accident on social media. Anything you or your child posts becomes evidence. Read our note on social media after an accident if you need the long version.

Injuries specific to child pedestrians (and why they matter for the claim)

Child pedestrian injuries are not scaled-down versions of adult injuries. NHTSA’s Special Crash Investigations findings and pediatric trauma literature both document why:

• Traumatic brain injury. A child’s head is proportionally larger and sits at bumper or hood height for many vehicles. Impact geometry means head strikes are common. Pediatric TBI can affect development for years, and symptoms often evolve months after the crash. For more on this, see our page on pediatric traumatic brain injury and our overview of delayed concussion symptoms.
• Pelvic and femur fractures. Bumper strikes to a child’s midsection often catch the pelvis or femur. These injuries can involve growth plates.
• Internal organ damage. Compression injuries to the abdomen from a bumper or from being thrown against pavement.
• Growth plate injuries. The most under-appreciated category. A fracture through a growth plate can affect limb length and function for the rest of the child’s life, even if the acute injury heals in 8 weeks.
• Psychological injury. PTSD, anxiety around traffic, sleep disruption. Documented and compensable.

Every one of these categories has short-term costs and long-term costs. The long-term costs are where child cases separate from adult cases.

How damages are calculated for a child

An adult pedestrian claim typically values medical bills, lost wages, and pain and suffering. A child pedestrian claim values a much longer runway. Categories that come into play:

• Past medical expenses. ER, imaging, surgery, hospitalization, rehab.
• Future medical care. Ongoing pediatric specialist care, revision surgeries as the child grows, adaptive equipment, developmental therapy, mental health treatment. Proven through a life care planner, an expert who projects care needs and costs across the child’s life.
• Lost earning capacity. Not lost wages (a child has none), but the diminished capacity to earn across a full working life. Proven through a vocational expert and an economist. This category can be substantial when a serious injury limits career options.
• Educational accommodations. Tutoring, IEP support, private schooling if public school cannot accommodate a TBI or cognitive impairment.
• Pain and suffering. Non-economic damages for the child’s physical pain, emotional distress, and loss of enjoyment of a normal childhood.
• Loss of consortium. In some cases, the parents have their own claim for loss of the parent-child relationship.

You cannot get any of this by handing the adjuster a stack of ER bills and asking for a number. It takes expert workup. Skipping the life care planner and vocational expert is the single most common mistake in child pedestrian cases handled without experienced counsel.

Minor settlements in Arizona: why court approval matters

This is the part most parents (and honestly, most general-practice lawyers) do not know: settlements for minors in Arizona generally require court approval.

Under A.R.S. § 14-5103 and Arizona probate practice, when a minor’s claim is settled above a modest statutory threshold, the settlement typically has to be approved by the court, often through a conservatorship or a minor’s compromise proceeding. The court reviews:

• Whether the settlement amount is reasonable given the injuries and future needs
• Whether the attorney’s fees are reasonable
• How the net proceeds will be held for the child (typically in a restricted account, structured settlement, or conservatorship)
• Who has authority to access funds and when

The purpose is to protect the child from settlements that shortchange them and to prevent the money from being spent before the child reaches adulthood. This adds procedural steps and time, but it is protective, not adversarial. If a lawyer or adjuster is pushing for a quick, informal settlement that bypasses court approval, that is a red flag.

Statute of limitations for a minor’s claim (and why waiting is still a bad idea)

Arizona’s standard personal injury statute of limitations is 2 years from the date of injury (A.R.S. § 12-542). For minors, the clock is tolled under A.R.S. § 12-502 until the child’s 18th birthday. That means a child injured at age 8 technically has until age 20 to file a lawsuit (18 + 2).

That sounds like plenty of time. It is not, for one simple reason: evidence disappears long before the deadline runs. Vehicle EDR data gets overwritten. Surveillance footage gets recorded over in 30 to 90 days. Witnesses move, forget, or die. Physical scene conditions change. Insurance companies lose files.

Waiting to file preserves the right to sue, but destroys the ability to prove the case. We recommend starting the evidence preservation process within days of the accident, regardless of when a lawsuit gets filed. For more on the general filing deadline, see Arizona’s statute of limitations.

Insurance sources: driver, family UM/UIM, umbrella, commercial

Recovery in a child pedestrian case can come from more places than parents realize:

• The at-fault driver’s liability policy. The starting point. Arizona’s minimum limits are low, so a serious injury can exhaust the policy quickly.
• Your family’s UM/UIM coverage. If the driver has no insurance or not enough, your own UM/UIM coverage can apply. This coverage protects pedestrians in your household, not just people in your car. Many parents don’t know this.
• Umbrella policies. The at-fault driver’s or your family’s. Umbrella limits of $1M or more are common and often overlooked.
• Commercial policies. If the driver was working (delivery, rideshare, contractor, school bus operator), a commercial policy with much higher limits may apply. Identifying employment status early is critical.

Finding every applicable policy is a significant part of the case, especially when the driver’s own limits are inadequate to the child’s injuries.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does my child have to give a statement to the driver’s insurance company?

No. Neither you nor your child is required to give a recorded statement to the other driver’s insurer. Politely decline and route their calls through counsel.

The driver said sorry and offered to pay our medical bills directly. Should we accept?

Be very cautious. Direct payment often comes with a request to sign a release, which can extinguish the entire claim, including future medical care your child may need for years. Get the offer reviewed before signing anything.

How is fault decided when my child ran into the street?

Under Arizona’s age-appropriate standard, a young child cannot be held to an adult’s judgment. An older minor is judged against what a reasonable child of similar age would do. Driver conduct (speed, attention, sightlines, duty in school zones and residential areas) is often the more significant factor.

If we settle, does my child get the money right away?

Generally no. Arizona courts typically require settlement funds for a minor to be held in a restricted account, structured settlement, or conservatorship until the child reaches adulthood. The court supervises the arrangement.

What if the driver had no insurance or very little?

Your family’s UM/UIM coverage may apply, along with any umbrella policy. If the driver was working at the time, a commercial policy may also be available. Identifying all coverage layers is a core part of case investigation.

How long do we have to file?

The 2-year statute of limitations is tolled until your child turns 18, giving them until age 20 to file. But waiting destroys evidence. Preservation should start within days of the accident, even if a lawsuit is not filed for years.

Get a Clear Answer About Your Child’s Claim

If your child was hit by a car in Phoenix or anywhere in Arizona, get advice from a lawyer who has handled these cases before you talk to the driver’s insurance company. The first 72 hours matter for evidence. The first few weeks matter for medical documentation. And the settlement structure matters for the rest of your child’s life.

Free case review: (602) 345-1818. We answer 24/7. No attorney’s fees unless we recover (case costs and fee terms are set out in the written agreement).

By Jared J. Pehrson | Impact Legal Car Accident Attorneys