Most people who think this do not say it out loud, because it sounds like giving something away. You were hit, you are hurt, and admitting that the other driver was not the entire explanation feels like handing the insurance company a discount.

In California, and particularly on Los Angeles streets, it is closer to the opposite. If the road contributed, you have not weakened your claim. You have possibly found a second defendant, the city or another public agency, and unlike the driver who hit you, that one does not come with a $30,000 ceiling. This is California law specifically, so it will not translate if you were hurt in another state.

The City Can Be a Second Defendant, Not a Smaller Share of the Same One

Your own fault reduces your recovery proportionally. If you were 20% responsible, you collect 80% of your damages. It does not bar the claim, which is how California differs from a handful of states where it would. Somebody else's fault does not reduce anything. Spreading responsibility across the driver and the city does not shrink the pie, it adds people who can be made to pay for it.

California permits recovery from a public agency when its property was in a dangerous condition, the agency knew or should have known, and the condition contributed to your injury. If your honest account is that the other driver made a mistake at a corner where that mistake was unusually easy to make, that sentence describes a case with two defendants, not a weaker one.

Here is what that looks like at real corners:

A local attorney, not a remote firm

A Traffic Engineer's Line Between Design and Neglect

My father spent decades as a traffic engineer for the City of Los Angeles, and he taught me what actually makes an intersection dangerous. I can take a second look at your corner and tell you honestly whether it was a design the city approved or a condition it let slide.

Arya Firoozmand, Esq.

Founding Partner · UCLA Law, '14

My father was a traffic engineer for the City of Los Angeles. I can tell you whether your corner was approved or just neglected.

Find Your Intersection

Check Your Corner Against the Record

Four city streets, not freeway ramps, where a maintenance failure rather than the driver could be part of the story:

Roscoe Blvd & Winnetka Ave

Canoga Park. 5 crashes, 6 people injured, one killed.

Reseda Blvd & Ventura Blvd

Tarzana. 5 crashes, 6 people injured.

Burbank Blvd & Reseda Blvd

Reseda. 5 crashes, 6 people injured.

Sherman Way & Woodman Ave

Valley Glen. 7 crashes, 6 people injured.

The busiest spots are freeway ramps, a harder case. See which kind yours is

The counts are modest, and that is worth saying plainly. A city intersection does not need dozens of crashes to support a claim, because the question is never volume. It is whether a specific condition was substandard, whether the agency knew, and whether it contributed to your crash. The busiest intersections in our data are freeway ramps, and they are busy because of traffic volume rather than because anything is defective.

Design Versus Neglect: The Whole Ballgame

There is a large exception sitting in the middle of that rule, and knowing where it falls will tell you roughly how strong your instinct is.

A public agency is protected when the thing you are complaining about was part of an approved engineering design. If a body with authority approved the plans before construction and there is substantial evidence the approval was reasonable, the agency is generally immune, even if the design turns out to be dangerous. That immunity is why complaints about the fundamental layout of a place rarely succeed: the sight lines of a freeway interchange, the curve radius of an off ramp. Someone with a license signed off on all of it.

What the immunity does not cover is maintenance and operations, because nobody ever approved a plan for the road to fall apart:

• Lane lines, stop bars or crosswalks worn away to nothing.
• A stop sign or warning sign missing, knocked askew, or hidden behind a grown out tree.
• Vegetation the agency was responsible for trimming, now blocking the view of oncoming traffic.
• Street lighting that has been out long enough that somebody should have noticed.
• A signal phase that was retimed, or never retimed as traffic volumes changed, so there is no protected left turn where the volume plainly demands one.

That list is where the winnable cases live. If your suspicion is on it, your instinct is worth acting on. If your suspicion is really "this intersection should never have been built like this," it is a harder road, though not a closed one, because an agency can still be liable for failing to warn about a concealed hazard even where the design itself is immune.

Why It Is Worth Pursuing Even at a Small Percentage

You might reasonably think a city at 15% is not worth the trouble when the driver was 85% responsible. The California damages rule says otherwise.

Medical bills, lost earnings and future care are joint and several, so any liable defendant can be pursued for the whole of those damages whatever its fault share. Only pain and suffering gets divided by percentage. A city at 15% can therefore be liable for every dollar of a $300,000 medical bill, with the 15% limiting only its slice of the non-economic damages.

Which is why the suspicion you have been keeping quiet is, in money terms, likely the most valuable thing you know about your own case.

Six Months, and Which Agency

A claim against a public agency has to be presented in writing within six months of the crash, which is far shorter than the deadline against a private driver and is the reason this cannot wait until you feel better.

Who gets it depends on who owns the road. A City of Los Angeles surface street goes to the LA City Clerk. A freeway, highway or ramp is the state's, and a claim over $12,500 goes to the Government Claims Program at the Department of General Services in West Sacramento rather than to Caltrans, with a $25 fee. Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Culver City and the other independent cities each take their own, and unincorporated areas like Marina del Rey go to the County.

What to Preserve, Starting Today

Conditions at an intersection change, sometimes quickly, and occasionally right after a serious crash. Evidence that exists now may not in three months:

• Photograph the approach from the driver's eye position, in the direction you were travelling, at the same time of day and in similar light.
• Photograph what blocks the view, the state of the paint, the signs, and anything burned out.
• Note the signal timing if there is one, including whether any left turn is protected.
• Write down what you remember about what you could and could not see, before the memory gets smoothed over by retelling.

Our community pages carry the collision history for the intersections we track, so you can see how many crashes and how many injured people are on record at your location.

The Honest Part

One thing worth checking before you decide your hunch is worthless. The City of Los Angeles publishes a High Injury Network, its own designation of about 6% of city streets that account for roughly 70% of traffic deaths and severe injuries. If your crash was on one of those streets, the city had already identified it as among the most dangerous it maintains, which is notice in the city's own handwriting. It covers city streets only, so it does not reach a freeway or a ramp.

Plenty of intersections that feel dangerous are legally fine. Notice is a real hurdle, since the agency must have known or the condition must have existed long enough that it should have, and a trivial defect does not count regardless of how irritating it is.

We handle these cases and have resolved one for $6,000,000 against a government entity. If you have been sitting on the thought that the road was part of what happened, tell us which corner it was. It is the fact most likely to change what your case is worth.