California Distracted Walking Law: 2026 Liability Shift

Food delivery apps have made city life more complicated, especially when it comes to pedestrian safety. Here in Los Angeles, we’re seeing a clear link between tech, traffic, and a jump in accidents involving distracted pedestrians, people staring at their phones, often to track services like Grubhub LA. A new California law, Assembly Bill 323, is about to shake things up. Signed in October 2025 and kicking in on January 1, 2026, AB 323 completely changes how we assign fault when a pedestrian on their phone gets hit. This directly alters accident liability across California, especially in the packed urban zones where delivery services are a constant presence. So does this mean pedestrians are now 100% to blame if they’re not paying attention?

Understanding California Assembly Bill 323: A Shift in Pedestrian Liability

California’s AB 323 is now officially on the books as California Vehicle Code Section 21950.5, and it’s the legislature’s answer to the growing “distracted walking” problem. Before this, California law put almost all the responsibility on drivers to avoid hitting pedestrians, even if the pedestrian was being careless. This new law changes that. It specifically says that if a pedestrian is hit while “using an electronic wireless communications device to write, send, or read a text-based communication while crossing a highway or street,” that action can be used to argue they were contributorily negligent. This is a massive change for personal injury claims, especially for accidents happening in high-traffic, high-distraction zones like Downtown Los Angeles or Hollywood where pedestrians and delivery drivers are constantly crossing paths.

The point of AB 323 is to force everyone to acknowledge a shared duty of care on the road. It doesn’t give drivers a free pass. Pedestrians have to use reasonable caution, just like drivers. When you’re engrossed in your phone, your ability to see a turning car or hear an approaching bike is shot, and this law finally recognizes that impairment. We’ve been seeing it for years in accident reports filed with the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). A huge percentage of pedestrian-involved incidents involve people wearing headphones or staring at their phones. While proving specific causation is always the tricky part in a case, you can’t ignore a correlation that strong.

Who is Affected by the New Law?

This new law, California Vehicle Code Section 21950.5, hits several groups hard. First and foremost, pedestrians. If you have a habit of crossing the street with your face buried in your smartphone, texting, browsing, or checking your Grubhub order, you now risk being found partially at fault in an accident. Under California’s pure comparative negligence rule, this will directly reduce the money you can get for your injuries, medical bills, and lost income. For example, if a jury decides a distracted pedestrian was 30% to blame, their total compensation gets cut by 30%.

Drivers, including gig workers for platforms like Grubhub, are also affected. While you still have a primary duty to drive carefully and avoid hitting people, this law gives you a solid legal argument that a pedestrian’s distraction was a major cause of the crash. It provides a more balanced way to look at liability. Imagine a Grubhub driver near the USC campus dealing with heavy traffic when a student, looking down at their phone, steps right off the curb. The driver can now argue the pedestrian’s action was the main reason for a collision they couldn’t avoid. This could mean a lower percentage of fault for the driver, which means less financial liability and a smaller hit to their insurance rates.

You can bet insurance companies are already rewriting their playbooks. They are going to start digging into accident reports and witness statements for any hint of a pedestrian using their phone. This will lead to more fights over claims and a bigger focus on collecting evidence at the scene, like phone records or witness testimony about what the pedestrian was doing. The California Department of Insurance will watch how this plays out, but claimants and insurers are going to feel the change immediately. As a personal injury attorney, I’m already changing how my team investigates these cases to make sure we get all the facts about pedestrian behavior right away.

Concrete Steps for Pedestrians and Drivers in Los Angeles

With California Vehicle Code Section 21950.5 now the law, both pedestrians and drivers in LA need to change how they operate to protect themselves. For pedestrians, the advice is simple: put your phone away when you cross the street. That includes the sidewalk right before a crosswalk. If you must check your Grubhub order status or answer a text, stop, and step out of the flow of traffic to a safe spot. Your situational awareness is everything. Look both ways, listen for cars, and try to make eye contact with drivers. Your safety is now legally tied to your attentiveness. The financial hit from being found even partially at fault can be huge, and it’s not worth the convenience of checking a notification while walking into an intersection.

For drivers, especially delivery drivers in Los Angeles, this law doesn’t reduce your core responsibility to drive safely. You still have to follow traffic laws, watch your speed, and stay alert for pedestrians. But if an accident with a distracted pedestrian does happen, documenting the scene is more critical than ever. If you think the pedestrian was on their phone, start gathering evidence immediately. This means:

• Photographs and videos: Get every angle of the scene, the pedestrian’s location, their phone if it’s visible, the traffic signals, everything.
• Witness information: Get names and numbers from anyone who saw what happened, especially if they can confirm the pedestrian was looking at a device before the impact.
• Police report: Make sure the responding officers document everything you tell them, specifically your observations about the pedestrian’s distraction.
• Dashcam footage: If you have a dashcam, save that footage. It can be the most powerful piece of evidence you have.

You have to report the accident to your insurance company and get legal advice immediately. An experienced personal injury lawyer can help you deal with the new statute and make sure your rights are protected, whether you’re the driver or the pedestrian. In my practice, we often bring in accident reconstruction experts to break down these scenarios, especially when phone use is a suspected factor, which can sometimes involve the complex legal process of subpoenaing phone records.

The Role of Comparative Negligence in California Accidents

California uses a system of pure comparative negligence, thanks to the state Supreme Court’s decision in Li v. Yellow Cab Co. (1975). In practice, this means you can recover damages even if you’re 99% at fault for an accident, but your final payout is reduced by your percentage of fault. California Vehicle Code Section 21950.5 gives lawyers and juries a new, very specific factor to consider when calculating that percentage for pedestrians. Before this law, it was tough to pin significant fault on a pedestrian unless they did something really reckless, like sprinting into traffic against a “Don’t Walk” sign.

Now, the simple act of texting while crossing the street gives the other side a clear legal hook to hang a percentage of fault on the pedestrian. This is a big change. Think about a situation near Grand Park in downtown LA: a pedestrian is staring at their Grubhub app, steps off the curb without looking, and walks into the side of a slow-moving car. Before, the driver might have shouldered most of the blame for not “avoiding the collision.” With the new law, that pedestrian’s active distraction could easily result in them being assigned 20%, 30%, or even more of the fault. That reduction in damages could be the difference between having all your medical bills covered and being left with a huge out-of-pocket expense.

The law doesn’t create an automatic finding of fault against the pedestrian. The specific facts of every case still matter most. But it hands defense attorneys a powerful argument for reducing their client’s liability, whether that client is an individual driver or a company like Grubhub facing a lawsuit. Sorting out these percentages is exactly what makes these cases so challenging and why you need expert legal representation to argue your side effectively.

Working through Insurance Claims and Litigation Post-AB 323

AB 323 has major consequences for how insurance claims and lawsuits are handled. When a pedestrian accident happens in Los Angeles now, the insurance adjuster will be asking one big question: was the pedestrian violating California Vehicle Code Section 21950.5? They’ll be asking for phone records if they can get them and taking detailed statements from witnesses about what the pedestrian was doing right before they were hit. For the pedestrian, this means trying to hide your phone use is a terrible idea that will only destroy your credibility. Being transparent, even about a mistake, is a much better legal strategy.

For drivers, especially gig workers on platforms like Grubhub, this law can be a strong shield against accusations of being 100% at fault. But they have to remember their own driving will be under a microscope. If you were speeding, using your own phone for navigation, or ran a stop sign when you hit a distracted pedestrian, you’re still going to hold a large share of the liability. The law just adds another factor to the shared-responsibility equation.

In court, expert witnesses are going to be more important than ever. Accident reconstructionists will analyze camera footage and vehicle data to establish speeds and points of impact. We may even call human factors experts to explain to a jury just how much a phone screen impairs a pedestrian’s perception and reaction time. These testimonies are what convince a jury to assign a specific percentage of fault to each person. The courtrooms in LA County, like the Stanley Mosk Courthouse, are going to be seeing a lot of cases that turn on these new arguments. As lawyers, we’re expecting a learning curve as the courts begin to interpret and apply this new law.

The goal of AB 323 is to make the roads safer by encouraging pedestrians to pay attention. It creates new legal hurdles for people injured while distracted, but it also creates a more balanced system for assigning fault. It’s about acknowledging that we all share responsibility in a busy, tech-saturated world. Understanding this change isn’t just about winning a lawsuit. It’s about preventing an accident from happening in the first place.

The passage of California Vehicle Code Section 21950.5 fundamentally alters how we assess pedestrian liability in collisions involving distracted walking. To navigate this new reality, both pedestrians and drivers in Los Angeles must change their behavior, prioritize paying attention, and be prepared to document everything if an accident happens.