Bakersfield, CA, November 12 – A pedestrian suffered serious injuries after being hit by a vehicle near Meadows Field Airport in Bakersfield early Thursday morning, according to the California Highway Patrol. The collision happened around 1 a.m. The injured person was taken by ambulance to Kern Medical, where they were described as having severe injuries. The agency has not released further information about the pedestrian or the circumstances of the crash.
Pedestrian seriously injured after being struck near Meadows Field Airport in Bakersfield
The collision took place near the intersection of Merle Haggard Drive and Wings Way. A red Toyota struck the pedestrian, who was knocked down in the westbound lanes of Merle Haggard Drive. The source does not say whether the pedestrian was crossing the road or walking along it, or what led up to the impact.
Emergency responders took the injured person to Kern Medical by ambulance. The injuries were described as severe. No update on the person’s condition has been released, and the pedestrian’s age and identity have not been made public.
Several details remain unconfirmed. The driver of the Toyota has not been described, and it is not known whether the driver stayed at the scene. No cause has been announced, and no information has been released about speed, impairment, citations or arrests. Details may be added if the California Highway Patrol shares more about the investigation.
What California law requires of drivers around pedestrians
Vehicle Code section 21950 requires a driver to yield the right of way to a pedestrian crossing within any marked crosswalk, or within an unmarked crosswalk at an intersection. Subdivision (b) is the one people misread: a pedestrian may walk or run, and doing either does not forfeit the right of way.
Subdivision (c) puts a separate duty on the driver. A driver approaching a pedestrian in any crosswalk must exercise all due care and reduce the speed of the vehicle. That duty applies whether or not the pedestrian had the right of way, and subdivision (d) preserves it: nothing in the section relieves a driver of the duty to use due care for the safety of any pedestrian in the roadway.
The deadline that applies to a claim like this one
Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1 gives two years for an action for injury to, or for the death of, an individual caused by the wrongful act or neglect of another. The same two years covers an injury claim and a death claim; there is no separate, shorter period because someone died.
If a public agency may be involved, the deadline is much shorter
Where a city, county, transit agency, school district or state agency is a potential defendant, Government Code section 911.2 requires a written claim to be presented to that entity within six months. The six months runs from when the claim accrues, and the claim is presented to the entity itself: a school district and a city are separate public entities with separate processes.
Two things follow that are easy to get wrong. The six months is the deadline to present the claim, not the deadline to sue, and it attaches to the public entity as a defendant rather than to the location of the crash, so a case with both a private and a public defendant is not entirely governed by it. Once the entity mails a written rejection, Government Code section 945.6 allows six months to file suit, which is shorter than the window that just closed. If no written rejection is ever sent, that period is two years from accrual.
Missing the six months is not automatically the end of it. Government Code section 911.6(b) requires the board to grant a late claim application on any of six grounds, including where the person was a minor, or was physically or mentally incapacitated, for the whole of the six months or for any part of it.
A claim against the City of Bakersfield is presented to the City Clerk at 1600 Truxtun Avenue, and the six months in Government Code section 911.2 applies to it.
Talking to someone about it
Culver Legal represents people injured in collisions across California. A conversation about what happened costs nothing, and we work on a contingency fee, which means there is no fee unless we win. If we do not win, we do not pass the case costs on to you either.
Nothing on this page is legal advice about any particular case, and the facts of a reported collision often change as the investigation continues.
