If you are a pedestrian, always make sure to use crosswalks and watch where you are going before stepping into the roadway. Always make sure you’re paying attention to traffic lights, crosswalk signs, and any traffic around. This will help keep you safe.

While you should always cross the street in a crosswalk if one is nearby, sometimes there simply isn’t one. Georgia law does have some specific provisions about negligence with respect to a pedestrian outside of a crosswalk, but every driver still has to exercise care for everyone while he or she is driving. Just because you weren’t in a crosswalk doesn’t mean you can’t recover.

If you have uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage or medical payments coverage, you can still make a claim even though you weren’t in a car. You’ve paid premiums for these coverages for years—use it.

The most important thing is to make sure you are out of the roadway and any injuries are being tended to.  But if able, identifying witnesses to the collision can be even more crucial in these cases than in “vehicle-to-vehicle” wrecks. It is important to find witnesses who can speak without bias about what actually happened to you—not just how the collision happened, but how you were doing immediately after.