
Andrew Pickett Law is a top Titusville pedestrian accident law firm that handles crash cases throughout Titusville and North Brevard County for victims who need help getting medical treatment and financial recovery. Founder Andrew Pickett grew up in Brevard County, and he has crossed these same streets on foot and behind the wheel since childhood.
What You Need To Know
- A pedestrian claim has more moving parts than it looks like from the sidewalk, and the insurance alone runs through three different policies. A lawyer who handles pedestrian claims keeps the moving parts from being settled against you in the first few weeks.
- We’d rather you finish reading knowing where you stand, whether you call us or not.
- See a doctor within 14 days of the crash. Miss the 14-day deadline and you lose Florida’s first layer of insurance money for good.
- You’ve got two years to file a lawsuit, and a claim about the road itself needs attention sooner than two years.
- Car insurance pays your first medical bills even though you were on foot, and the policy that pays is often your own.
- A corner crossing counts as a crosswalk even where no paint marks the crossing, so being outside the painted lines didn’t end your claim.
- You can order the crash report yourself about ten days after the crash, and the agency that holds it depends on where you were hit.
- A published ranking can become evidence in your case, and the region’s own planners twice ranked US 1 through downtown the county’s worst road for people on foot.
- Andrew Pickett prosecuted cases in the same circuit where a Titusville case is tried. Insurers price a claim differently when the lawyer takes cases to a jury.
- The crash report. Ready about ten days after the crash. Closed to everyone but you, your lawyer and your insurer for 60 days.
- School zone camera video. Destroyed 90 days after the ticket from that day is finished.
- The road’s own files. Held by the state, and handed to anyone who asks for them in writing.
- The crossing itself. Signal timing, lighting and paint change with the next project, and the road stops matching your memory of it.
A crash between a car and a person on foot is never an even match. If you were the one walking, you are almost certainly hurt worse than anyone else involved. Someone from the driver’s insurance company has probably called already, sounding sympathetic, and mentioning that you were not in the crosswalk. The first medical bills arrive around the same time. The only car in the crash belonged to somebody else, so nobody has told you whose insurance is supposed to pay them.
Start with whose insurance pays, because most people guess wrong. The crosswalk argument, the fee and the first call come next. The deadlines, the road records and the statute citations sit further down.
Whose Insurance Pays When You Were on Foot
You were walking, and the only car in the crash belonged to somebody else, so nobody has told you whose insurance pays your bills. Most people guess wrong about who pays.
The first payment comes from car insurance rather than from the driver who hit you, and the law checks three policies in a fixed order. The order stays the same no matter who caused the crash.
Your own car insurance pays first, if you own a car. If you own no car, the law looks to a relative living in your home, and the relative’s policy pays. A grandmother’s policy can cover a grandchild struck walking home from school, as long as the two live under one roof.
If nobody in your home carries a policy either, the insurance on the car that hit you pays instead. Whichever policy the law lands on, the coverage inside is identical.
See a doctor within 14 days whichever policy applies. Miss day 14 and you lose the first layer of insurance money for good.
“You Weren’t in the Crosswalk” Is an Opening Line, Not a Finding
The driver’s insurance company opens with the same sentence: you weren’t in the crosswalk. You may have been standing in a crosswalk without knowing it.
Paint marks some crosswalks, and paint doesn’t create them. At any intersection, Florida treats the unmarked continuation of the sidewalk across the road as a crosswalk, whether or not anyone painted lines there.
Even a real mistake on your part doesn’t end the claim. Your share of the blame reduces what you collect, and only a share above half stops the claim.
Treat the opening line as a negotiating position rather than a verdict. An adjuster who says it has decided nothing, and neither has an officer who wrote it into a report.
We Spend on Your Pedestrian Case Long Before You Pay a Cent
Andrew Pickett Law works on a contingency fee only. We take a minority percentage of whatever we recover for you, and we charge no fee at all if we recover nothing. You’ll never write us a check to get started, and you’ll never see an hourly bill. Florida law caps a contingency percentage, so no firm sets its own ceiling. The Titusville car accident page lists the caps themselves.
We back the Bar’s cap with a commitment of our own. We work your case to its maximum value, and we spend money on the case long before a settlement arrives. We pay the filing fees, we order the medical records, and we hire the experts, and no bill reaches you while you’re still healing. Ask any firm you talk to, including us, who pays the advanced costs if you lose. Firms answer the question differently, so get the answer in writing before you sign anything.
You’ll Always Know Who’s Holding Your File
Andrew Pickett prosecuted cases for years in the Eighteenth Judicial Circuit, and Brevard judges try Titusville pedestrian cases in the same circuit. He built a courtroom record there before he ever represented an injured person. He trained at the Trial Lawyers College, and he tries injury cases to verdict. An insurance carrier prices a file differently when the lawyer holding it has taken cases to a jury.
Clients tell us the same thing in their reviews: they always knew what was happening in their own case. We’ll tell you the next step and roughly when it comes. When something changes, you’ll hear about the change from us rather than finding out later, and you’ll always know who’s holding your file.
Tell Us Where You Were Walking and What the Insurer Said
A first call is a conversation, not a commitment. You describe where you were walking and what the driver’s insurer has told you, and we’ll tell you which policy owes you the first medical money.
Bring the crash report number if you have it, and the name of your own car insurer or a relative you live with. You can call with no paperwork at all.
If Andrew Pickett Law takes your case, our fee comes out of a recovery and nothing comes out of your pocket while the case runs.
A Pedestrian Claim You Can Close Without a Lawyer
A pedestrian claim can settle without a lawyer. If your own policy paid the bills, you healed, and the driver’s insurer offered a fair number without arguing about the crosswalk, take the offer and keep the whole amount.
A claim goes the other way when the bills outrun the first layer of coverage, or when somebody starts arguing about where you were standing.
You don’t have to guess which case you’ve got. Call us, describe where you were walking and what you’ve been offered, and we’ll tell you whether the offer matches the coverage. The review is free and nobody signs anything.
Two Deadlines Are Already Running, and the Short One Is 14 Days
Both clocks on a pedestrian claim started the moment you were hit. Neither one pauses while you heal or wait for somebody to call you back.
See a doctor within 14 days or the first insurance money is gone
See a doctor within 14 days of the crash, even if you think you can walk it off. Florida opens its first layer of insurance money only to people who got care inside that window.1 Missing the window does not shrink that money. It erases it. A hospital visit on the day you were hit counts, and so does urgent care, and so does your regular doctor. If the crash was recent and nobody has looked at you yet, that appointment protects your money as well as your body.
A lawsuit has to be filed within two years
You have two years from the crash to file a lawsuit over it.2 That window is shorter than it sounds once treatment, records and an insurance claim are all running at once. The Titusville personal injury page works through the rest of the deadline arithmetic, including what changes when a crash takes a life.
A claim about the road has to warn the government first
A missing sidewalk, a dark crossing or a signal that ran out of time is a claim about the road itself. The road belongs to a government, and a government has to be warned before anyone can sue it. You send it a formal written notice of your claim, then give it time to answer. The law calls that step a pre-suit notice.3 That wait comes out of your two years instead of adding to them. A road claim therefore needs attention earlier than an ordinary one.
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The First Insurance Money Does Not Come From the Driver Who Hit You
A pedestrian hit by a car in Florida does get insurance money, but it starts from an unexpected place. The first payment comes from car insurance rather than from the driver who hit you, and the law checks three policies in a fixed order.1 The order does not depend on who caused the crash. Your own car insurance pays first, if you have a car. If you do not, the law looks to a relative who lives in your home, and their policy pays. A grandmother’s policy can cover a grandchild struck walking home from school, as long as the two live under one roof. If nobody in your home has a policy either, the insurance on the car that hit you pays instead. Whichever policy the law lands on, the coverage inside it is identical.
The coverage is called personal injury protection, or PIP, and it covers 80 percent of medical bills and 60 percent of lost wages, up to $10,000.1 The coverage follows you rather than any car, so a policy bought for driving pays a person hurt while walking. The two deadlines never change either. You have 14 days from the crash to see a doctor, or the benefit disappears.1 You also need the doctor to record an emergency medical condition in your chart. Without that note, the $10,000 shrinks to $2,500, a cap explained fully on the Titusville car accident page.4
Money past the $10,000 comes from the driver who hit you, and here the state’s rules run against people on foot. Florida does not require drivers to carry bodily injury coverage, the kind that pays for harm done to other people.5 When the driver bought none, the claim usually moves back to your own policy or a household relative’s policy. A part of that policy stands in for the insurance the driver should have had, and it is called uninsured motorist coverage. The Titusville car accident page explains how that coverage works, including the written notice it needs before you settle anything.6
Being Outside the Painted Lines Did Not End Your Claim
The driver’s insurance company opens with the same line: you were not in the crosswalk. You may have been inside one without knowing it. Paint marks some crosswalks, but paint does not create them. At any intersection, the law treats the unmarked continuation of the sidewalks across the road as a crosswalk.7 A person crossing at a corner is inside a crosswalk whether or not a single stripe sits on the asphalt.
Inside a crosswalk, the driver’s duty is stronger than most drivers believe, and how strong depends on the crossing. At a signalised intersection with the walk signal in your favor, and at any crossing with a sign telling drivers to stop, the law requires the driver to stop and to stay stopped while you cross the half of the road they are driving on. At a plain corner with no signal and no sign, the driver must yield the right of way to you, slowing down or stopping if that is what it takes.7 Either way, a driver who eased forward while you were still crossing broke that rule, whatever the insurer says about it later.
Outside any crosswalk, marked or unmarked, the duty flips, and a walker has to yield the right of way to cars.7 The statute also tells a walker not to step suddenly off a curb into the path of a car too close to stop. The driver’s insurer will read you those two sentences, so hold on to what they actually decide. A violation feeds a share of the blame, and it does not end a claim. In these cases a jury splits fault into percentage shares, a rule called comparative fault. Only a share above 50 percent bars recovery.8 The full arithmetic is on the Titusville personal injury page.
A different rule protects people walking along a road rather than across one. The rule that bars walking in the roadway applies only where a sidewalk is provided, so a road that offered you no sidewalk cannot, by itself, make walking on it your fault. Where there is no sidewalk, the law asks you to use the shoulder when there is a usable one, on the left side, facing the traffic coming toward you.7 Where there is no usable shoulder either, you had nowhere else to walk.
Nobody Is Saving the Records That Decide Your Case
The strongest proof in a pedestrian case is usually not in your hands. It sits on a pole camera, in a police file, or in a state engineer’s project folder. Every one of those has its own release rules and its own erase date, set long before you were hit. The agencies and companies holding them have no duty to keep anything for you, and no way of knowing you exist. Below is what exists right now, who holds it, and how long you have.
For 60 days, your crash report goes only to a short list of people
Where you were hit decides who wrote your report. Titusville Police cover crashes inside the city limits. The Brevard County Sheriff’s Office covers crashes outside them, and the Florida Highway Patrol covers I-95 and the state highways. The report becomes available about ten days after the crash. For the first 60 days it goes only to the people involved, their lawyers and their insurers.9 The Titusville car accident page shows you how to request the report from each agency.
A school zone camera may be holding video of your crash for 90 more days
Titusville runs automated speed cameras in ten school zones, several of them on streets walkers use most. Garden Street, Dairy Road and Knox McRae Drive are all on the list. The city ordinance behind those cameras allows the recordings to be used for deciding civil liability, not just for speeding tickets.10 The same ordinance orders the video destroyed within 90 days after the recorded event is resolved. A struck pedestrian may be on footage that nobody is keeping for them. If you were hit near a school, treat those 90 days as a real deadline. The Titusville personal injury page tells you how to preserve that video and where to send the written request.
US 1 downtown was ranked the county’s worst walking corridor before your crash
The region’s transportation planners keep a ranked list of the roads where people get hurt. Each road segment gets a score built from the number and the severity of its crashes. In the newest cycle, covering 2018 through 2022, the stretch of US 1 from Garden Street to Dairy Road scored 1,131 for pedestrian crashes. That was the worst score of any corridor in Brevard County. The cycle before it, covering 2017 through 2021, ranked the same stretch first as well, at 1,109. That score put it ahead of North Courtenay Parkway and Wickham Road. Counted across every kind of crash, the same segment scores 2,188, the highest of any road inside a city’s limits anywhere in the county.11
Two Titusville crossings appear on the regional intersection list. Southbound US 1 runs through downtown as Hopkins Avenue. Where it meets Garden Street, the crossing scored 306 in the newer cycle and 300 in the older one. That score puts it among the region’s five worst pedestrian intersections, and Robbins Avenue at Pine Street appears at 283.11 The wider area carries the same pattern. The Palm Bay, Melbourne and Titusville metro ranks 11th out of 101 metro areas nationally for pedestrian danger in the 2026 Dangerous by Design study.12
Rankings like these are not a law firm’s advertising numbers. They are the published work of the region’s own planning body. That body ranked this stretch of US 1 worst in the county twice in a row before your crash happened. When a case later asks what a road’s owners knew, and when they knew it, their own rankings are where the answer starts.
A road claim has to reach whoever owns the road, and it is rarely the City
Every road has an owner, and in Titusville the owner of the dangerous ones is usually not the City. The state’s transportation department, called FDOT, maintains I-95, US 1, Cheney Highway, South Street, Garden Street and the Challenger Memorial Parkway. The City spells out one exception itself: the western-most end of Garden Street, past South Lake Elementary, is City-maintained. The City publishes the whole list.13 Which agency is responsible for the stretch you were hurt on decides where your claim goes, and it is worth checking the list rather than assuming. The pre-suit notice described above has to reach the government that owns the road, and it has to arrive before any suit.3
The corridor ranked worst in the county and the intersection ranked among the region’s five worst are both FDOT roads. A claim about the crossing, the signal timing or the lighting on either one notifies FDOT rather than Titusville City Hall. A notice sent to the wrong government is a notice nobody ever gave. The Titusville personal injury page covers the deadlines and dollar caps that come with government claims.
The state studied one Titusville intersection and wrote down what it found
FDOT’s own paperwork sometimes says out loud what the agency knew. The department is redesigning the median opening on Garden Street at Christian Court, a $100,000 design project. Its project page gives the reason in one sentence: “A traffic services study conducted by the Department concluded that safety improvements are needed to prevent serious crashes.”14 That sentence means a study exists. A named Titusville intersection was examined by the road’s own authority. The authority found safety concerns and wrote them down before any particular crash.
FDOT releases a study like that only on request, and nobody at the agency will mention it to you. For a crash near a place the state has already examined, that study is the owner’s own record of what it knew beforehand. Somebody has to ask for it before anyone can read it, so we send that request early in a road case.
Your crash date decides the sidewalk argument on South Street
South Street, the state road numbered SR 405, had no sidewalk on its east side until the spring of 2025. FDOT built one that spring. A $4.8 million project laid a six-foot sidewalk from Fox Lake Road to north of Joe Murell Drive, and V. A. Paving was the contractor. The project also added median refuge islands and intersection lighting, and it finished in spring 2025.15
The spring 2025 completion date now splits pedestrian cases on South Street in two. For a crash before the sidewalk existed, walking in the roadway on the east side was lawful, because no sidewalk was provided. For a crash after it, the same walk becomes a comparative fault argument, because a sidewalk now sits a few feet away. The date of your crash decides which side of that line you stand on. Pin down the date and the exact spot before anyone starts arguing about what you were doing.
Frequently Asked Questions About Pedestrian Accident Claims
I don’t own a car. Can I still use car insurance for my medical bills?
Yes, even if you have never bought an auto policy. Florida checks the same three policies in the same fixed order for everyone. Your own policy pays first if you have one, and a policy belonging to a relative you live with pays next. If neither exists, the PIP on the car that hit you pays your benefits.1 The 14-day doctor deadline applies no matter which policy pays. If the crash was recent and nobody has seen you yet, that appointment is the most useful thing you can do today.
The driver’s insurer says I was jaywalking. Is my case over?
No, and jaywalking is not even a word the traffic statutes use. The accusation often collapses on the crosswalk rule. Crossing at an intersection puts you in a crosswalk whether or not paint marked one.7 Even where a crossing did break the statute, the violation feeds a share of the blame rather than ending the claim.8 The insurer’s opening number for that share is an argument, not a ruling.
The driver took off and was never found. Who pays my bills?
The first two policies Florida checks never depended on the driver at all. Your own PIP, or a household relative’s policy, still pays the first benefits.1 Past that, the law treats a driver nobody can identify the same as an uninsured one. The claim moves to the uninsured motorist coverage on those same policies, explained on the Titusville car accident page.6 Report the crash promptly, because insurance policies carry their own notice deadlines, and save anything that might identify the vehicle.
Why am I getting bills from two different hospitals?
Brevard County has a single hospital rated to take the most severe injuries, Holmes Regional in Melbourne, about 45 miles south.16 Seriously hurt pedestrians are often stabilized at Parrish Medical Center first and then moved there. The transfer splits your records between two hospital systems and puts several providers in line for the same $10,000 of PIP. Keep every bill and discharge paper from both hospitals. Brevard is also one of the few Florida counties where a hospital can file a claim against the settlement money itself.17 The check that finally reaches you turns on the amounts actually paid for your care, not the amounts billed.18 Both rules live in full on the Titusville personal injury page.
Does it matter whether I was hit on US 1 or on a neighborhood street?
No, not for the claim against the driver. The same insurance order and the same fault rules apply everywhere in Titusville. For a claim about the road itself, the location decides everything, because it decides the owner. US 1 and the other state roads belong to FDOT. A further list including Barna Avenue, Carpenter Road and Dairy Road belongs to Brevard County, and the rest belong to the City.13 The pre-suit notice has to reach the owner. When in doubt, the City’s own list of the streets it does not maintain is the place to check.
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References
- Fla. Stat. § 627.736 — personal injury protection; benefits for a person struck while not an occupant of a self-propelled vehicle; the order of priority (own policy, resident relative’s policy, the striking vehicle’s insurer); 14-day treatment requirement; 80% medical and 60% wage benefits within the $10,000 limit. Velez v. Criterion Ins. Co., 461 So. 2d 1348 (Fla. 1984).
- Fla. Stat. § 95.11(5)(a) — two-year limitations period for negligence, as amended by ch. 2023-15.
- Fla. Stat. § 768.28 — waiver of sovereign immunity; pre-suit notice and damages caps.
- Fla. Stat. § 627.736(1)(a)4 — the $2,500 limit absent an emergency medical condition determination.
- Fla. Stat. § 324.022 — financial responsibility; no bodily injury liability coverage required.
- Fla. Stat. § 627.727 — uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage; § 627.727(3) deems certain insured vehicles uninsured; § 627.727(6)(a) requires written notice of a proposed settlement by certified or registered mail, with 30 days for the carrier to respond. (Unidentified-driver and hit-and-run claims come through the standard UM policy form’s definition of “uninsured motor vehicle” and the cases construing it, not through this section.)
- Fla. Stat. § 316.130 — pedestrian and driver duties: § 316.130(7)(a) (signalised intersection) and (7)(b) (signed crossing) require the driver to stop and remain stopped, while (7)(c) requires the driver to yield, slowing down or stopping if need be, where no signal or sign is in place; § 316.130(10), a pedestrian outside a crosswalk yields; no sudden departure from a curb; § 316.130(3)–(4), the bar on walking in the roadway applies where sidewalks are provided, and where none is provided a pedestrian walks on the left shoulder when practicable, facing traffic. The crosswalk definition, Fla. Stat. § 316.003, includes the unmarked prolongation of sidewalk boundary lines at an intersection.
- Fla. Stat. § 768.81(6) — modified comparative negligence; recovery barred above 50% fault.
- Fla. Stat. § 316.066(2) — crash report confidentiality for 60 days; parties, counsel and insurers excepted.
- Titusville Code of Ordinances §§ 20-70 to 20-80 (Ord. No. 16-2025) — school zone speed detection; § 20-75 designated zones; § 20-77 permitted use for determining civil liability and 90-day destruction requirement.
- Space Coast TPO, 2024 Vision Zero Action Plan, Appendix B (crash data 2018–2022) — US 1 Garden St→Dairy Rd, #1 pedestrian high-injury corridor, severity 1,131; all-modes 2,188; US 1 (SB Hopkins Ave) @ SR 406 (Garden St) 306; Robbins Ave @ Pine St 283.
- Smart Growth America, Dangerous by Design 2026 (10 Jun 2026) — Palm Bay–Melbourne–Titusville metro ranked 11th of 101.
- City of Titusville — streets not maintained by the City (FDOT: I-95, US 1, SR 50 (Cheney Hwy), SR 405 (South St/Columbia Blvd), SR 406 (Garden St), SR 407 (Challenger Memorial Pkwy); County list including Barna Ave, Carpenter Rd, Dairy Rd, Parrish Rd). The same page states: “Only the western-most end of Garden St past South Lake Elementary is City-maintained.” https://www.titusville.com/Faq.aspx?QID=134 (read 30 Aug 2026).
- FDOT project 992503-9 — SR 406 (Garden St) @ Christian Court median modification, Traffic Operations Pushbutton Program, $100,000, in design; “A traffic services study conducted by the Department concluded that safety improvements are needed to prevent serious crashes.” https://www.cflroads.com/project/992503-9 (read 30 Aug 2026).
- FDOT project 443169-1 — SR 405 (South Street), from south of Bobbi Lane to north of Swan Lake Drive; 1.41 miles, $4.8M, V. A. Paving, Inc.; new 6-ft sidewalk on the east side (Fox Lake Rd to north of Joe Murell Dr); 8-ft shared-use path on the west side (Fox Lake Rd to north of Swan Lake Dr), replacing a 6-ft sidewalk; median refuge areas and intersection lighting. Completed spring 2025. https://www.cflroads.com/project/443169-1
- Florida Department of Health trauma center list (Aug 2025) — Holmes Regional Medical Center, Melbourne, Level II; Brevard County’s only trauma center.
- Brevard County Code §§ 54-66 to 54-71 — liens for hospital care; ten-day filing with the Clerk of the Circuit Court.
- Fla. Stat. § 768.0427 — evidence of medical damages; amounts paid rather than billed.
Other Case Types We Handle
- Car Accident
- Truck Accident
- Motorcycle Accident
- Uber & Lyft Accident
- Bicycle Accident
- Scooter Accident
- Golf Cart Accident
- Boating Accident
- Slip and Fall
- Premises Liability
- Airbnb and Vacation Rental
- Dog Bite
- Sexual Abuse
- Workers’ Compensation
- Wrongful Death
Areas and Zip Codes Served From Our Titusville Office
- Titusville — 32780 and 32796
- Mims and Scottsmoor — 32754
- North Brevard County
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Meet Andrew Pickett
Dealing with the murky policies of insurance companies designed to confuse and prevent you from receiving compensation is our expertise.
15+ years experience as a personal injury attorney.
Specialized in battling insurance companies.
95% settlement rate for clients.
Handled 450+ personal injury cases.
Collected more than $50 million for clients.
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