Hayward Personal Injury Attorney

Three of every four serious and deadly crashes in Hayward happen on just 14% of its streets, the corridors the city maps as its High Injury Network (Safe Streets Hayward). If you were hurt on one of those roads, the road is part of your case. This guide takes each corridor in turn: what the city’s safety data shows there, which agency writes the report and what evidence usually exists. For a Hayward personal injury attorney, that corridor-level detail is where a serious case begins.

On this page:

• The city’s priority list
• Foothill Boulevard and the downtown Loop
• Hesperian Boulevard
• A Street and B Street
• Tennyson Road
• Mission Boulevard, Jackson Street and Industrial Parkway
• Common questions after a Hayward crash

The city’s priority list

The 157,113 people who live in Hayward, by the Census Bureau’s 2025 estimate (Census), share these streets with BART riders and with commuters cutting through to avoid freeway backups. In 2023 the city adopted a road safety plan built on five years of SWITRS data, 2017 through 2021. The plan’s tally for that window was 3,207 reported crashes, with 35 fatal and 142 causing severe injury (Hayward LRSP). The plan then ranked the places where that harm clustered.

Nearly nine in ten of Hayward’s deadly or severe crashes, 87%, happened where two streets meet. A ranking does not decide who caused your collision. It does show the city had already identified the location as dangerous, which becomes relevant if signal timing, sight lines or the street’s design played a part.

Foothill Boulevard and the downtown Loop

Since March 15, 2013, Foothill Boulevard, A Street and Mission Boulevard downtown have carried traffic in a one-way couplet known as the Hayward Loop (SR-185 history). The half mile of Foothill between A and D streets is now the top-ranked segment in the safety plan. Drivers use the Loop to get around freeway congestion, and the city’s traffic manager has described speeding there as a serious problem (CBS News).

Evidence on the Loop: With several lanes moving one way, sideswipes and lane-change crashes often come down to two drivers each saying the other moved. Storefront and garage cameras along Foothill can settle it, but private systems record over themselves, so we send preservation requests in the first days. Note your lane and the nearest cross street while you still remember them.

The city’s Safe Streets Downtown effort is studying redesign options for the Loop, including a return to two-way travel. That study shows how the street is viewed today. It is not, by itself, proof that the city caused any particular crash.

Hesperian Boulevard

Hesperian shows up twice on the priority list: Winton Avenue to Cathy Way, and again from Golf Course Road to Southland Drive. It also carries several of the city’s most dangerous intersections, and it is one of three Hayward streets with the most DUI crashes, alongside Mission Boulevard and Tennyson Road (Hayward LRSP). On June 5, 2025, a pedestrian was killed at Hesperian and Longwood Avenue, which Hayward police called the sixth fatal collision of 2025 in the city (Hayward PD).

Watch out: Where impairment is suspected on Hesperian, the police DUI investigation and your injury claim run on separate tracks. Ask for the report number on the night of the crash, because the criminal file may take months to close.

A Street and B Street

A Street

A Street between 2nd Street and Hesperian Boulevard is the single highest-priority location in the city’s plan, and its crossing with Montgomery Street ranks among the top five intersections. It is also one of the streets where the most people on foot are struck.

B Street

One block north, B Street from 2nd to Filbert logged 38 crashes, and the city made it a first-phase Safe Streets corridor from Martin Luther King Jr. Drive to Watkins Street (Safe Streets Hayward).

These are short, busy blocks near downtown shops and the Hayward BART station. When a pedestrian is hit in a crosswalk here, the case usually turns on three things:

• which signal phase was showing when the person stepped off the curb,
• what the turning or through driver could see past parked cars and buses,
• and whether a shop, a bus or a passing driver’s dashcam caught it.

Tennyson Road

Tennyson ranks among Hayward’s worst streets for both pedestrian crashes and DUI crashes, and the stretch from Pompano Avenue to Ruus Road alone saw 51 crashes in the five study years. In February 2025 a pedestrian was killed at Tennyson and Calaroga Avenue (Hayward PD).

People on foot have become the city’s most urgent street-safety concern. After three pedestrians were killed on Hayward streets within ten days in February 2026, the City Council set a March 24, 2026 work session on focused enforcement, signal timing and limits on right turns on red (City of Hayward). Any measures that follow will not change the facts of an earlier crash, but the public record of that session can help explain the conditions at the time.

Mission Boulevard, Jackson Street and Industrial Parkway

Mission Boulevard

Mission Boulevard, also State Route 238, combines the city’s most serious crash types: people on foot, impaired drivers, broadsides and vehicles leaving their lane. Between D Street and Palisade Street, 47 crashes were reported over the study years. In March 2025 a passenger was ejected and killed in a single-vehicle crash at Mission and Gresel Street (Hayward PD).

Single-vehicle crashes on Mission deserve more attention than they usually get. Lane departures made up about 37% of crashes on the High Injury Network, and roughly half of those happened in darkness or low light (Hayward LRSP). For an injured passenger, the lighting, the pavement and the driver of the car can all bear on who pays.

Jackson Street

Jackson Street, the approach to SR-92 and the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge, is a second-phase high-injury corridor from Santa Clara Street to Mission, and its junction with Foothill and Mission is a top-five priority intersection.

Industrial Parkway

Farther south, two miles of Industrial Parkway between Whipple Road and Mission had 3 fatal or severe crashes, and in May 2025 a bicyclist was killed at Depot Road and Adrian Avenue.

When the crash was on a freeway

Collisions on I-880, I-580, I-238, SR-84 and SR-92 are handled by the CHP’s Hayward Area office at 2434 Whipple Road, which serves more than 700,000 residents, commuters and visitors a day across 45-plus miles of freeway (CHP Hayward Area). The same office covers roughly 470 miles of county roads in Castro Valley, San Lorenzo, Ashland, Cherryland and Fairview.

That split explains why Hayward’s state figures look modest at first glance: 378 victims in 2023, 60th of 62 cities its size (OTS 2023). Those rankings leave the freeways out. The pedestrian line is more telling: 57 victims, 19th of 62, including 7 children under 15.

Who is hurt most seriously

Source: Hayward LRSP. Speeding was a factor in one of every five (20%). Over the five years, 53 pedestrians, 10 bicyclists and 110 drivers and passengers were killed or seriously injured. In 2023, 1,604 trauma patients were admitted at Sutter Health Eden Medical Center in Castro Valley, southern Alameda County’s regional trauma center (Alameda County EMS).

Common questions after a Hayward crash

Was my crash handled by Hayward police or by the CHP?

It depends on where it happened. A collision on Hesperian, Tennyson or another city street is usually Hayward police. A crash on I-880 or on a county road in Castro Valley or San Lorenzo belongs to the CHP office on Whipple Road. Look at the officer’s card; it names the department.

Can the city be responsible for a dangerous intersection?

Sometimes. Under California’s government-claims rules, Hayward can be liable when the way it built, signed or maintained a street created a real hazard that helped cause the crash, and the written claim has to reach the city within six months. An intersection’s ranking in the city’s plan helps on the question of notice, but your crash is still proven on its own facts.

My mother was hit in a crosswalk on A Street. Who pays her medical bills?

The at-fault driver’s insurer pays in the end, but rarely right away. Until then, Medicare or her own health plan, plus any med-pay on a household auto policy, can cover treatment at Eden or elsewhere. Those payers may later seek reimbursement from the settlement, and reducing those liens is part of our work.

The car that hit me drove off. Is there still a claim?

Often, yes. Hayward had 47 hit-and-run injury crashes in 2023. That claim runs through uninsured motorist coverage, either on your own policy or on one held by a relative you live with. Tell your own insurer about the hit-and-run quickly, because a late report gives the company a reason to resist.

When a Hayward claim must be filed

For an ordinary claim against an insured motorist, Hayward residents generally have two years to file in court (CCP §335.1). AC Transit and the City of Hayward are public entities, though. A crash involving one of their buses or trucks, or one caused by a defect in a city street, starts a six-month clock for the written claim (Gov. Code §911.2). With the Council now reviewing signal timing and crosswalks, that six-month date is often the first one we calendar on a Hayward pedestrian case.

Fault is shared, not all-or-nothing. If a jury decided a rider on Industrial Parkway was one-quarter responsible, the rider would still recover three-quarters of proven losses (CACI 405).

A filed case belongs to the Alameda County Superior Court, whose Hall of Justice at 24405 Amador Street in Hayward lists civil matters among its case types, and the court also hears unlimited civil cases at the René C. Davidson Courthouse in Oakland (court location page). Assignment between the Amador Street and Oakland courthouses is the court’s decision, made under its own rules when the complaint is filed.

What our firm does on a Hayward case

The Law Offices of Jacob Emrani (Call Jacob) represents people injured across Hayward: drivers broadsided on Mission Boulevard, pedestrians struck on Tennyson Road or A Street, riders hurt on Industrial Parkway and passengers in Loop crashes downtown. Every corridor on this page produces car accident claims, and we handle them. Beyond drivers, we take cases for people on foot in downtown crosswalks (pedestrian accidents), motorcycle riders on Mission and Industrial Parkway, cyclists, people hit by trucks, rideshare and AC Transit bus passengers, shoppers who slip and fall in local stores, and families with wrongful death claims.

On a new Hayward case we first learn whether the report sits with Hayward police or the CHP office on Whipple Road, and we check the crash site against the city’s priority list. Then we gather what that corridor offers:

• the Hayward PD or CHP report, plus any separate DUI or hit-and-run follow-up
• Eden Medical Center trauma and imaging records
• footage from Foothill storefronts, BART station areas or AC Transit buses
• night photographs of the lighting and crosswalk markings at the scene
• the uninsured motorist section of each household auto policy

Many of our clients were only passing through on their way to the bridge or the freeway; others are recovering at home in San Lorenzo or Castro Valley. We meet clients in their rooms at Eden and at home in Hayward. (888) 952-2952 reaches a Hayward car accident attorney directly, and the free case evaluation form works as well if you would rather write than talk. We are paid only if we win your case. Español: calljacob.com/es.

Written from Hayward’s 2023 safety plan, police releases and California statutes as general information, not legal advice.

Sources

1. Sub-est2025 — Census
2. LRSP 2023 — Hayward
3. Safe Streets Hayward — Hayward
4. Hesperian/Longwood — Hayward PD
5. Tennyson/Calaroga — Hayward PD
6. Depot/Adrian — Hayward PD
7. March 2026 work session — Hayward
8. Downtown speeding — CBS News
9. State Route 185 — Wikipedia
10. Area 345 — CHP
11. OTS 2023, Hayward — OTS
12. Trauma assessment 2025 — Alameda EMS
13. Amador Street courthouse — Alameda courts
14. CCP §335.1 — Legislature
15. Gov. Code §911.2 — Legislature
16. CACI 405 — Justia