September 8, 2026 | Car Accidents | Personal Injury

Hit by a Car on PCH? What Huntington Beach, Sunset Beach, and Seal Beach Families Should Know

If you or someone in your family was hit by a car on Pacific Coast Highway in Seal Beach, Sunset Beach, or Huntington Beach, start with medical care, then report the crash to police within 24 hours. That police report is what a California uninsured motorist claim depends on when the driver leaves. Two deadlines follow, six months to present a claim that involves a government agency, under Government Code section 911.2, and two years to file the personal injury lawsuit, under Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1. This guide covers the driver-left case and the driver-stayed case.

Which situation are you in?

What should we do in the first 72 hours?

In the first 72 hours after a pedestrian is hit on PCH, six things need to happen: medical care, a police report, photographs of the scene, witness names, a request to nearby businesses to preserve their video, and a running record of what the crash is costing.

1. Get medical care. This isn’t only about health. The record a doctor makes in those first days is the most useful document in the case later. Injuries that look minor at the scene, especially head injuries and internal ones, often show up a day or two afterward.
2. Start the police report. Which agency takes it depends on where along the corridor it happened. Seal Beach Police handle their city, Huntington Beach Police handle theirs including the Sunset Beach stretch, and the CHP may take it depending on the location. If you’re not sure, call the non-emergency line for the closest city and ask them to route you. There is a 24-hour reason not to let this sit, and the next section explains it.
3. Take photographs. The crosswalk or the spot where the person was walking, the lane markings, the lighting, the signal, the sightlines, any debris. Take more than feels necessary.
4. Get witness names. Witnesses scatter fast. If anyone stopped, get a name and a phone number even if you don’t yet know what they saw.
5. Preserve nearby video. This is the piece almost every family misses. The restaurants, surf shops, gas stations, and storage places along that corridor mostly run consumer-grade recorders on a loop that commonly overwrites within days, sometimes as few as three. Nobody there is saving it for you. Someone needs to walk the block, ask each business to preserve that window, and get it copied.
6. Keep receipts and a log. Mileage to appointments, hospital parking, co-pays, days of work someone missed. Families never think to track it and then can’t reconstruct it a year later.

What if the driver left?

A driver who leaves the scene does not end the claim, because California Insurance Code section 11580.2 treats a car whose driver is unknown as an uninsured motor vehicle. The claim moves onto the injured person’s own uninsured motorist coverage instead of the missing driver’s policy.

Uninsured motorist coverage reaches people on foot, not only people in cars. Someone walking on PCH, with no vehicle of their own involved in the crash at all, can still claim on the coverage attached to the car sitting in their own driveway.

Section 11580.2 defines “insured” to include the named insured, their spouse, and relatives living in the same household, and it covers those relatives whether they were in a car “or otherwise.” A parent’s policy or an adult child’s policy in the same house can be the one that responds.

The statute sets two conditions on a hit-and-run uninsured motorist claim, and both of them are on a clock.

1. Report to police within 24 hours. The report goes to the police department of the city where it happened, or if it happened in unincorporated territory, to the county sheriff or the local CHP headquarters. The report can be made by the injured person or by someone on their behalf, which matters when the injured person can’t do it.
2. File a sworn statement with the insurer within 30 days. It states, under oath, that there’s a cause of action against a driver whose identity can’t be determined, and it sets out the facts supporting that. The statute says within 30 days thereafter, and the safe reading is that the clock runs from the crash, not from the day the police report was taken.

California’s uninsured motorist statute also requires physical contact between the unknown car and the insured, or between that car and the vehicle the insured was occupying.

A pedestrian struck by the fleeing car meets the physical contact requirement. Someone forced off the road by a car that never touched them generally does not, and that distinction has ended otherwise-good claims.

The uninsured motorist claim also has its own two-year clock, separate from the lawsuit deadline. Under Insurance Code section 11580.2(i), the claim is lost unless, within two years of the crash, one of three things has happened: a lawsuit has been filed against the driver, the insurer and the injured person have agreed on the amount, or arbitration has been formally demanded in writing by certified mail. Families sometimes assume the claim is safe because they reported it. It isn’t, until one of those three steps is taken.

Uninsured motorist coverage pays only up to the limits written on that policy, and a lot of people carry the state minimum without knowing it.

A Seal Beach uninsured motorist claim runs on the injured person’s own policy, which is why the limits on that policy matter so much. If police later identify the driver, the case can shift back onto that driver’s liability coverage, and a hit-and-run case in Seal Beach often ends up running on both.

What if the driver stayed?

If the driver stayed and gave insurance information, that driver’s liability coverage is the first source of payment, and in a serious injury case it is frequently too small to cover what happened.

For any policy issued or renewed on or after January 1, 2025, California’s minimum liability limits are $30,000 for injury to one person, $60,000 for injuries to more than one person, and $15,000 for property damage.

Those 2025 minimums went up from the old 15/30/5 limits, and the increase reaches a policy when it is issued or renewed on or after January 1, 2025. A policy written before then carried the old limits until its renewal date, so those older minimums are still out there.

A $30,000 liability limit does not go far in a pedestrian case. An ambulance, an emergency room, imaging, and one night in a hospital can exhaust it before anyone talks about surgery, rehab, or months of lost income.

Underinsured motorist coverage is built for that gap, but it works by subtraction, not addition. UIM sits on the injured person’s own policy, the same place UM does, and it pays up to the UIM limits on that policy minus whatever the at-fault driver’s insurer paid. A $100,000 UIM policy and a $30,000 liability payment leaves $70,000, not $130,000.

Two conditions come with it under Insurance Code section 11580.2. The at-fault driver’s liability limits have to be exhausted by actual payment, with proof sent to your own carrier, before UIM opens. And UIM exists only when your own uninsured motorist limits are higher than that driver’s liability limits, so a household carrying 30/60 that is hit by a 30/60 driver has no UIM claim at all.

In a serious pedestrian case, underinsured motorist coverage is often where most of the recovery comes from. Building a pedestrian injury case in Seal Beach means finding every policy that could pay, and the same coverage math decides most car accident claims on PCH.

Can the road itself be part of the claim?

The road itself can be part of the claim, because PCH through Seal Beach, Sunset Beach, and Huntington Beach is State Route 1, a state highway owned and maintained by Caltrans rather than a city street. That is set by statute, and none of these three cities has had its segment relinquished.

Sometimes the condition of the road is part of what happened. A burned-out light on a dark stretch, striping that stopped being visible, a crossing signal that never got adjusted.

California law does allow a claim against a public entity for a dangerous condition of its property, but it has real requirements. You have to show the condition was dangerous, that it caused the injury, and that this kind of injury was foreseeable. You also have to show either that a public employee’s act created it or that the agency knew or should have known in time to do something.

The State can also defend a roadway claim on the ground that the design was approved in advance, under Government Code section 830.6. That is one reason these claims need early investigation, and why a maintenance failure like a burned-out light or faded striping usually sits on firmer ground than the design itself.

A city can be a defendant alongside the State, for facilities it owns rather than the highway itself, like sidewalks and lighting it controls. Who owns what on a given block is a records question, and we pull those records.

A claim against the State of California is presented through the Department of General Services, and Government Code section 911.2(b) conditions the presentation date on a $25 filing fee or a granted waiver. Getting the right agency and the right window is the whole game on a state highway.

Government Code section 911.4 allows a late-claim application, made within a reasonable time and no later than one year after the claim accrues, but it is an application and not a right. It has to state why the claim was late, and the agency can say no. If it does, Government Code section 946.6 allows a petition asking the superior court for relief.

If a public agency rejects the claim in writing, the deadline to sue that agency is six months from the date of that rejection notice, under Government Code section 945.6(a)(1). The two-year statute does not govern that lawsuit.

Simon Law Group raises the six-month deadline early with every family on this corridor. By the time most people are ready to think about a lawyer, a chunk of that six months is gone.

What if the injured person can’t handle this themselves?

If the injured person cannot handle the claim, a spouse, an adult child, a parent, or another close family member can act for them, through a power of attorney, a conservatorship, or a guardian ad litem. Families ask whether an incapacitated adult means everything stops. It doesn’t.

Three routes let a family member step in, and which one fits depends on the situation.

• A power of attorney, if one was signed before the injury and it’s broad enough to cover this. Plenty of families have one filed away from an estate planning meeting years ago and don’t realize it’s relevant.
• A conservatorship, where a court appoints someone to make decisions for an adult who can’t make them right now. It takes time, which is another reason to start early.
• A guardian ad litem, where a court appoints a family member to stand in for the injured person for the legal case itself. It’s narrower than a conservatorship and often the practical answer.

Government Code section 911.4 also does not count time the injured person was mentally incapacitated without a guardian or conservator, which can stretch the late-claim year. Do not plan around it. The right move is still to get someone appointed and present the claim inside the six months.

We sort out which of those three routes applies and do that work as part of the case, rather than sending a family off to figure it out alone.

If a loved one doesn’t survive their injuries, a different set of rules applies and a different group of family members has the right to bring the claim. A Seal Beach wrongful death attorney can explain who qualifies and what the timeline looks like.

Which two deadlines matter?

The two deadlines most families need are six months to present a claim against a public agency, under Government Code section 911.2, and two years to file the personal injury lawsuit, under Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1. A hit-and-run adds a third, on the uninsured motorist claim. Most people know about the second one and get blindsided by the first.

• Two years. California Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1 gives two years from the injury to file a personal injury lawsuit. That’s the one people have heard of.
• Six months. If any part of the case involves a public agency, and on a state highway it might, Government Code section 911.2 requires a claim within six months. Miss it and the two-year statute doesn’t save you, because that door closed first. And once the agency rejects that claim in writing, Government Code section 945.6(a)(1) gives six months from the rejection notice to file suit against it.
• Two years on the uninsured motorist claim itself. If the driver left, Insurance Code section 11580.2(i) requires a lawsuit, an agreed amount, or a certified-mail arbitration demand within two years of the crash, or the claim is lost.

The six-month government claim deadline is the one we see cost people the most, and it’s almost always because nobody told them it existed.

What do we do for families in this situation?

Simon Law Group handles the case work a family shouldn’t have to think about while somebody is in a hospital, from pulling the police report to filing the government claim inside the six months.

• Get the police report and read it properly.
• Walk the corridor and preserve the camera footage before the loop erases it.
• Find and interview witnesses.
• Pull the roadway ownership and maintenance records so nobody guesses about who’s responsible.
• Identify every policy that might pay, including the ones nobody in the family knew applied.
• File the government claim inside the six months.
• Deal with the adjusters, including your own carrier on a UM claim.

Simon Law Group has recovered hundreds of millions of dollars for our clients. Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome in any other case.

No fees or costs unless we win. The first conversation is free, and it doesn’t obligate you to anything.

© Simon Law Group. Attorney advertising. Responsible attorney: Robert T. Simon, CA Bar No. 238095. The Simon Law Group, 2916 W 164th Street, Torrance, CA 90504. This page is provided for general informational purposes and does not constitute legal advice. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes. Contacting Simon Law Group or submitting a form does not create an attorney-client relationship.