Car Accident Lawyer in Pasadena

What do Pasadena’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, Pasadena placed 7th of 62 cities its size for total people killed and injured in traffic collisions, with 978 victims. Speed-related collisions ranked 13th of 62 with 125, nighttime collisions 17th of 62 with 79, and hit and run 21st of 62 with 60. These are rate-based rankings adjusted for population and traffic volume, so they say Pasadena is worse than comparable cities rather than that it has the highest raw counts in California. What makes Pasadena unusual is the second layer: the City publishes two safety plans that name specific locations. Its 2022 Local Roadway Safety Plan counted 7,576 crashes between 2015 and 2019, including 29 fatalities and 109 severe injury crashes, and ranked the intersections. Four of the five worst are on Lake Avenue, led by Lake and Orange Grove with 69 collisions. Its October 2025 Focused Local Roadway Safety Action Plan reports 3,051 injury crashes between 2020 and 2024, 6 percent of which killed or seriously injured somebody, and states that 80 percent of those severe outcomes occur on just 13 percent of the City’s roadways.

That matters for a car accident claim in a specific way. If your collision happened on one of the eight corridors Pasadena names as Safety Corridors, which are Arroyo Parkway, Colorado Boulevard, Fair Oaks Avenue, Lake Avenue, Los Robles Avenue, Marengo Avenue, Washington Boulevard and Sunset Avenue, the City has already documented the risk at that location in its own published plan. That does not win a case by itself, and a public entity has defences available to it, but it changes the starting position on what was known. On the practical side: Pasadena Police route collision reports through a third-party vendor rather than selling them at the counter, so the report is bought online. If the City is a potential defendant, for a signal fault or a road defect, the claim goes to the City Clerk’s Office at 100 N. Garfield Ave., Room S228, within six months under Government Code section 911.2, with the claims line on (626) 744-4333. Collisions on the 210, the 134, the 110 or the 710 are normally California Highway Patrol matters rather than Pasadena Police, which changes who holds the report.

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

Cases are filed in the Northeast District, at the Pasadena or Alhambra courthouse, and Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena is a Level II trauma center, so unlike most cities in this county a serious injury here is likely treated inside the city. The deadline is generally two years from the date of injury under Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1, and six months to present a written claim where a public entity is involved under Government Code section 911.2, in which case the shorter deadline governs.

More on local practice on the Pasadena personal injury page, and on the law itself on the Los Angeles car accident page. The other collision types with Pasadena’s own published figures: pedestrian accidents, bicycle accidents and motorcycle accidents. Mass tort claims are taken on for Pasadena residents as well, and those are set out on the mass torts page.