Car Accident Lawyer in Santa Monica

What do Santa Monica’s crash figures show for car accidents?

In the California Office of Traffic Safety rankings for 2023, where rank 1 is the worst in the group, Santa Monica placed 39th of 103 cities its size for total people killed and injured in traffic, with 417 victims, which is close to the middle of its group. The same table then turns sharply: 62 pedestrian victims, 3rd worst of 103 cities its size, 11 of them aged 65 and over, also 3rd worst of 103, 48 bicyclists, 8th worst of 103, and 33 motorcyclists, 6th worst of 103. These rankings are rate-based, adjusted for population and daily vehicle miles travelled, so they say Santa Monica is worse than comparable cities rather than that it has California’s highest raw counts, and the Office of Traffic Safety cautions that they are indicators of potential problems to be read against local circumstances.

The City’s own figures are more recent and point the same way. In a Vision Zero study session report to the City Council on 8 September 2026, its Public Works Mobility Division counted 214 fatal or severe injury crashes between 2021 and 2025, 21 of them fatal, and 20 of those 21 deaths involved a pedestrian, 16, or a bicyclist, 4. Crashes of that severity across all modes fell from 62 in 2024 to 52 in 2025. In the same report the City told its Council, in its own words, that it did not achieve the goal it adopted in February 2016 of eliminating fatal and severe injury crashes by 2026. For a driver or a passenger hurt here, that makes the fight in a claim one about severity and the share of blame rather than about whether a collision happened. Alcohol was involved in collisions producing 44 victims in 2023, 36th worst of 103 cities its size, so it is a real but mid-table feature of driving here.

Who investigates depends on the road. The Santa Monica Police Department handles collisions on city streets, and its Records Unit at 333 Olympic Drive holds the reports, on (310) 458-8491. The department publishes no flat fee for a report and sets one after a request is submitted. Interstate 10 is different. The stretch inside the city limits is a state highway maintained by Caltrans, recorded as the Santa Monica Freeway and, from postmile R2.155 to postmile R4.267, as the Ricardo A. Crocker Memorial Highway, named by Senate Concurrent Resolution 20 of 2007 for a Santa Monica police officer killed in Iraq in 2005. It begins in the city at State Route 1, the Pacific Coast Highway, also a state highway. Freeway collisions are normally California Highway Patrol matters, and a complaint about the roadway there runs against a state defendant rather than the City.

If the street itself contributed, the City can be a defendant, but the argument has to be built differently here. Its September 2026 report found the 2021 to 2025 fatal and severe injury crashes widely dispersed, with no single intersection carrying more than three and no corridor more than 12 percent of the total. Ocean Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard accounted for 26 each and Pico Boulevard for 22, and the City concluded that what remains cannot be resolved by a small number of hot-spot projects. So no street here is the city’s worst street, and naming one gets a claim nowhere. What does the work is the record for your location: the High Injury Network the City is updating, the priority locations in its Local Roadway Safety Plan of 2022, and the near-term works the report lists, such as speed humps on Berkeley Street and speed feedback signs on Yale Street and Marine Street.

Where is a Santa Monica car accident case filed, and what are the deadlines?

California is a pure comparative fault state, so a share of the blame reduces what you recover rather than ending the claim. The deadline is generally two years against another driver and six months for a written claim against a public entity, which here includes Big Blue Bus, operated by the City itself rather than by a regional agency. Cases are filed in the West District under Local Rule 2.3(a)(1)(A).

There is more on the Santa Monica personal injury page, and the wider practice on the Los Angeles car accident page. Santa Monica’s other collision pages cover pedestrian, bicycle and motorcycle claims. If your matter is a drug, device or product claim rather than a collision, Broukhim Legal PC also takes on mass tort and complex litigation work for people living in and around Santa Monica.