Usually more than one policy, and rarely the one you would expect. Pedestrian cases are built from layered coverage, and the crosswalk question is not the whole story.
A person on foot has nothing between them and a vehicle. That single fact makes these cases different from ordinary car wrecks: the injuries run more severe, the treatment runs longer, and the money question gets harder because one policy often is not enough.
The instinct is to ask whether the driver's insurance will cover it. The better question is how many policies are actually in play, because in a serious pedestrian case the answer is usually more than one.
Recovery is layered, and people leave layers on the table
Most claimants find the driver's liability coverage and stop there. On a catastrophic injury that coverage is frequently exhausted long before the medical bills are.
- The driver's liability coverage, which is where everyone starts.
- Your own uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage, which can apply to you on foot even though no car of yours was involved.
- Medical payments coverage, if your policy carries it.
- Health insurance, which will pay and then assert a subrogation interest against your recovery.
- A commercial policy, if the driver was working at the time.
That second one surprises people most. If the driver fled or carried nothing, your own policy is often the case. In Missouri, uninsured motorist coverage is not optional; state law requires it in auto liability policies. Underinsured coverage is a different animal and depends on what you bought.
Whether those policy limits can be combined across vehicles is a real question with real money attached, and it turns on the actual policy form rather than on what an adjuster says on the phone. It is worth having someone read the declarations page.
Do not accept the first coverage answer you get, especially from the at-fault driver's carrier. Their job is to close your file at the first layer. Identifying every applicable policy before anyone signs anything is most of the work in these cases.
The crosswalk question is not the whole case
The defense in almost every pedestrian case is some version of the same story: you were not in a crosswalk, you were in dark clothing, you stepped out, you were looking at your phone. Expect it, because it is coming regardless of what actually happened.
Crosswalk position is a factor, not a verdict. Driver speed, attentiveness, sight lines, lighting, and whether the driver could have avoided you all matter, and those facts often favor the person on foot once someone actually develops them.
There is also a wrinkle specific to Missouri that surprises attorneys, not just clients. A meaningful part of Missouri's crosswalk right-of-way rules live in a model traffic ordinance that binds only in cities that adopted it. Which rules governed your intersection can depend on which municipality you were standing in. A driver's ordinary duty of care applies everywhere regardless, but establishing which specific rules applied is early work. Illinois puts its pedestrian rules in a statewide code instead. Our pedestrian accident page goes further into this.
Which side of the river decides how much fault costs you
This is the difference that changes case value the most, and it is worth understanding before you accept anyone's characterization of what happened.
Missouri uses pure comparative fault. Being partly at fault reduces your recovery by your share, but it does not eliminate it. Illinois uses a modified rule with a bar: past a threshold share of fault, recovery drops to zero.
That means the same disputed facts produce very different outcomes depending on where you were hit. In Missouri, a fight about whether you were in the crosswalk is a fight about how much. In Illinois, it can become a fight about whether you recover at all, which is why the defense presses it harder there.
If a government vehicle or a public roadway is involved
These cases carry deadlines that are shorter and stranger than the ordinary ones, and they are not symmetrical between the two states. Illinois in particular runs claims against local public entities on a much shorter filing deadline than the standard personal injury period, and it replaces that period rather than adding a step to it.
Missouri has a notice rule that people frequently over-apply. It is narrower than the summaries suggest and does not reach every government defendant. Either way, if a city, county, transit agency, or public employee is anywhere near your facts, that analysis needs to happen in weeks rather than months. The deadlines page has the periods.
What to do now
- Keep treating, and be accurate with every provider about how it happened.
- Photograph the scene, including sight lines and lighting at the same time of day.
- Find the video early. Nearby businesses, doorbell cameras, and transit vehicles overwrite footage quickly, sometimes within days.
- Get the names of witnesses now. They scatter and rarely resurface.
- Send your own policy to someone who will actually read it, not just the declarations summary.
- Do not give the at-fault carrier a recorded statement before you understand the coverage picture.
Where a pedestrian does not survive the collision, the claim becomes a wrongful death case, and the deadlines and the list of who may bring it differ between the two states in ways that matter. That analysis should not wait.
This post is general information, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Christopher A. Reeves is licensed in Missouri (Bar #70709). Illinois admission is pending, and until it issues Illinois matters are handled by co-counsel arrangement with an Illinois-admitted attorney or referred to a vetted Illinois firm. Past results do not guarantee similar outcomes, and every case turns on its own facts and the applicable law.