New York City stopped penalizing people for crossing outside a crosswalk when Local Law 98 of 2024 took effect in February 2025, ending a rule on the books since 1958. Pedestrians may now cross at any point, including against a signal, without the summons and $250 fine that used to follow. For someone struck by a driver while crossing mid-block, the question that matters is what the change does to the fault argument in a civil claim.
Losing the penalty doesn’t hand anyone on foot an automatic win, and the law still says a person crossing outside a crosswalk has to yield to traffic that holds the right of way. What disappeared is the citation an adjuster pointed at when it wanted to assign most of the blame and close the file cheaply. Fault now runs through the driver’s obligation to watch the road, and that gets proven with video, timing evidence and measurements rather than assumptions about where somebody crossed.
What Local Law 98 changed and what it left alone
The repeal covers enforcement rather than civil liability, and the two get blurred constantly after a crash. No officer can write a summons for crossing mid-block any longer, but the collision report still contains contributing-factor fields, and one option describes pedestrian error or confusion. Adjusters read those fields closely, so an officer’s quick impression can follow a claim for months even though the conduct is now lawful. Correcting one takes witness statements or footage contradicting what the officer was told.
The yielding rule also survived, and it’s the part insurers quote most often. Crossing outside a crosswalk is permitted, but the pedestrian doesn’t hold the right of way there and has to give way to vehicles that do. That gives the defense a starting position rather than a conclusion, because a driver with a clear view of someone already in the roadway for several seconds cannot lean on right of way alone.
The duty New York places on drivers
State law has always asked more of drivers than most people realize. Vehicle and Traffic Law section 1146 requires every driver to exercise due care to avoid hitting a pedestrian anywhere on the roadway, and to sound the horn when necessary. That language was never limited to crosswalks, which is why the repeal fits so cleanly with the statute. Blocks crowded with double-parked delivery vans and constant mid-block crossing are exactly where a driver is expected to slow down and keep scanning.
Speed then carries most of the weight, since the citywide limit sits at 25 miles per hour and lower on a growing list of streets. An attentive driver at that speed has room to stop for a person who steps out twelve or fifteen feet ahead. Reconstructing that gap is technical work, and it’s one reason people hurt while crossing contact a New York City pedestrian accident law firm before giving any statement about what happened.
How comparative fault actually works here
New York applies pure comparative fault, which is more forgiving than most other states. A pedestrian found partly responsible still recovers damages, reduced by the percentage of fault the jury assigns, so someone judged 40 percent responsible for stepping out between parked cars recovers 60 percent of proven losses. Insurers rarely try to prove total pedestrian fault, because pushing that percentage upward achieves the same thing at settlement.
Those percentage arguments get assembled from small details, which is why the record has to be filled in early. Dark clothing at night, a phone in hand, how far into the lane the person had walked and whether the driver was accelerating away from a light all feed the adjuster’s number. Countering it takes more than a denial, and jaywalking injury lawyers spend much of the early stage fixing those details in place rather than leaving them to memory.
Where the video usually comes from
Manhattan and Brooklyn streets are covered by private cameras far more densely than most people assume, and those recordings are the most useful thing in a crossing case. Retention is the obstacle, because these systems write over themselves on a fixed cycle. What settles fault is the time and distance a recording lets an engineer measure, since footage showing a pedestrian in the lane four seconds before impact reduces the dispute to arithmetic.
Bodegas and corner stores: Storefront systems commonly hold three to thirty days, and the owner has no obligation to keep anything unless asked. A request made in person, backed up in writing that week, is often the only reason a file still exists.
Residential and office buildings: Doorman lobbies, loading docks and garage entrances point cameras at the sidewalk and curb lane, the exact view showing how long someone was visible. Managing agents usually want a written request or a subpoena, and their systems tend to purge on a thirty-day loop.
Buses, trucks and other vehicles: MTA buses carry several exterior cameras, delivery fleets run forward-facing dashcams, and rideshare drivers often have their own. The route and run number, or the fleet number on a truck door, gives you something specific to request.
Steps that protect a claim in the first weeks
Treatment records do more work than most people expect, so being evaluated the same day and following through on referrals keeps that record clean. Gaps give the defense an easy argument that the injuries were minor or unrelated. Photographs taken at the same hour and in similar light show what the driver could see, including anything parked where it blocked the view. Anyone weighing a call to a pedestrian hit by car lawyer should ask how quickly that office sends preservation requests, because the timing decides what survives.
What the change means for your claim
The repeal didn’t rewrite negligence law and it didn’t make drivers automatically responsible for every mid-block collision. It removed a shortcut that let insurers treat an ordinary way of moving around the city as proof of carelessness, putting the focus back where the traffic statute always pointed. Whether that holds up depends on what evidence still exists a month later.
Decriminalized jaywalking does not mean someone on foot carries the blame for being hit. Karns & Karns Personal Injury and Accident Attorneys can hold drivers to their duty of care and counter the assumption that crossing outside a crosswalk decides the case. Reach us at 1-800-4-THE-WIN (1-800-484-3946).
