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Claiming as a pedestrian in Scotland

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Claiming as a pedestrian in Scotland

A pedestrian struck by a vehicle is at the top of the hierarchy of road users and at the bottom of the protection offered by a metal shell. Both facts shape the claim. So does the Scottish rule on children, which is the one nearly every article gets wrong.

RFPublished by Rooney Family Law Limited, solicitors, regulated by the Law Society of Scotland · Last reviewed 14th August 2026

The short version

You do not need insurance to be a pedestrian and you do not need any to claim. The driver who struck you must, by section 143 of the Road Traffic Act 1988, have a policy in force, and by section 145(3)(a) that policy must cover liability for death or bodily injury to any person arising out of the use of the vehicle on a road or other public place in Great Britain. A pedestrian is any person. The claim is against the driver and is met by their insurer.

If the driver had no insurance, or did not stop and was never traced, the Motor Insurers’ Bureau schemes take over. Those are dealt with on claiming against an uninsured or untraced driver, and hit and run cases involving pedestrians are among the most common applications made under the untraced scheme.

The hierarchy of road users, and what it actually does

Since 2022 the Highway Code has opened with a hierarchy of road users. Rule H1 places the greatest responsibility on those who can do the greatest harm, and rule H2 requires drivers to give way to pedestrians crossing or waiting to cross a road into which or from which the driver is turning.

The hierarchy is influential but it is not a rule of liability. Section 38(7) of the Road Traffic Act 1988 provides that a failure to observe a provision of the Code does not of itself render a person liable to criminal proceedings, but may in any proceedings, civil or criminal, be relied upon by any party as tending to establish or negative liability. In practice a driver who turned across a pedestrian already crossing has a much harder case to argue now than before 2022, but it is still argued on the evidence of what each of them did.

Crossings, and away from them

Being on a crossing helps a pedestrian’s case; being off one does not end it. Drivers owe a duty to keep a proper lookout and to drive at a speed at which they can stop within the distance they can see to be clear, and that duty does not switch off between crossings. A pedestrian struck while crossing at a point of their own choosing may still recover in full where the driver was speeding, distracted, or failed to see what was there to be seen.

The pedestrian rules run from rule 1 to rule 35 of the Code and cover pavements, the Green Cross Code at rule 7, crossings and junctions. An insurer will use them to build a contributory negligence argument, and the same evidential limit under section 38(7) applies to that use.

If you were partly to blame

Shared blame reduces the award and does not defeat it. Section 1(1) of the Law Reform (Contributory Negligence) Act 1945, applied to Scotland by section 5, requires damages to be reduced to the extent the court thinks just and equitable having regard to the claimant’s share in the responsibility.

The usual arguments against pedestrians are stepping out from between parked vehicles, crossing while looking at a phone, crossing against a signal, and dark clothing at night. Each is a matter of evidence. None of them is a rule, and none of them produces a fixed percentage. A driver travelling too fast for the conditions may still bear most or all of the responsibility for a collision the pedestrian contributed to.

Children struck as pedestrians

Child pedestrian injuries are the largest single group of serious pedestrian claims, and this is where Scottish and English law separate most sharply.

The claim ordinarily expires at age 19

Section 17(3) of the Prescription and Limitation (Scotland) Act 1973 requires any period during which the injured person was under legal disability by reason of nonage to be disregarded. Nonage in Scotland ends at sixteen, because section 1(1)(b) of the Age of Legal Capacity (Scotland) Act 1991 gives a person of sixteen or over full legal capacity. The three years therefore run from the sixteenth birthday and expire on the nineteenth. Articles written for the whole United Kingdom will tell you the twenty-first, and the Motor Insurers’ Bureau’s own eligibility page tells claimants they have until three years after their eighteenth birthday. In Scotland both are wrong. That is the ordinary case. The three-year period can start later where the relevant facts were not known, under section 17(2)(b), and section 19A is a contested application to the court rather than a safety net to plan around.

A parent or guardian may raise the action on the child’s behalf at any point before that, and where the injury is significant there is every reason to do so rather than wait: witnesses move, road layouts change, and a child’s future losses are easier to prove while the evidence is fresh.

On blame, a young child is judged by what can reasonably be expected of a child of that age, not by an adult standard. The younger the child, the harder it becomes to establish contributory negligence at all, and the more the argument shifts to whether the driver should have anticipated a child near a school, a park, an ice cream van or a residential street.

What a pedestrian claim is worth

Pedestrian injuries are typically severe, because there is nothing between the person and the vehicle. Fractures of the legs and pelvis, head injury and lasting psychological effects are common, and the valuation reflects the individual injury rather than a scale.

The whiplash tariff has no application here at all, and not only because pedestrians rarely suffer whiplash. Part 1 of the Civil Liability Act 2018 extends to England and Wales only under section 13(1). A Scottish award is solatium for pain and suffering, past and future, together with patrimonial loss for earnings, care, treatment, equipment and travel. How much compensation could I get explains how those are built, and brain injury claims covers the head injury cases separately.

Time limit, court and expenses

Three years for an adult, under section 17 of the 1973 Act, from the accident or the later date of knowledge under section 17(2)(b). Claims of not more than £25,000 fall within the compulsory pre-action protocol made by the Act of Sederunt (Sheriff Court Rules Amendment) (Personal Injury Pre-Action Protocol) 2016; claims of not more than £100,000 must be raised in the sheriff court under section 39 of the Courts Reform (Scotland) Act 2014, with the National Personal Injury Court at Edinburgh available throughout Scotland. The protocol does not apply where the accident or other circumstance giving rise to liability occurred before 28th November 2016, or where the claimant is not represented by a solicitor. The £25,000 figure fixes the scope of the compulsory protocol rather than an absolute ceiling: under paragraph 4, where the estimate rises above it the claimant must tell the defender, and the parties may agree to carry on following the protocol voluntarily.

If the action fails, section 8 of the Civil Litigation (Expenses and Group Proceedings) (Scotland) Act 2018 protects the pursuer from an award of expenses provided the proceedings were conducted in an appropriate manner, subject to the exceptions in section 8(4) and in the 2021 Act of Sederunt.

Sources

This page is general information about the law of Scotland and is not advice on your circumstances. Time limits are strict and the consequences of missing one cannot be undone. Take advice on your own case.