Malibu Personal Injury Attorney

By the city’s own count, sixty people died on Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu in the ten years before May 2024 (City of Malibu). Nearly every case a Malibu personal injury attorney takes on here traces back to that one road, roughly 21 miles of it. This page is therefore arranged the way you drive it, from Trancas at the Ventura County line to Topanga at the Los Angeles end, with the crash history, the enforcement changes and the evidence that matter on each stretch.

Watch out: Five speed-camera systems authorized by SB 1297 now operate along PCH. Warning notices began in September 2026, and ticketing begins in late November 2026, with fines from $50 to $500 depending on speed (City of Malibu). Camera records could matter to your claim, so ask early how long they are kept.

Why a city of 9,574 ranks first among its peers

Fewer than ten thousand people live in Malibu, 9,574 by the Census Bureau’s July 2025 estimate, and 31.8% of them have reached 65 (Census QuickFacts). The highway brings everyone else. Measured against 102 other small cities in the Office of Traffic Safety’s Group E, where 1 marks the worst record, Malibu’s 2023 results reflect that through-traffic (OTS):

Look first at the night-time and alcohol rows. Twenty-one injury crashes between 9 p.m. and 3 a.m. placed the city first in its group, and the state’s Go Safely PCH campaign exists partly for that reason (Go Safely PCH). And Malibu ranked fourth for alcohol-involved victims but 88th for DUI arrests, which suggests that impaired drivers were injuring people here more often than they were being stopped. Caltrans data summarized in the city’s 2015 safety study had already put the PCH collision rate at 1.24 per million vehicle miles, with the central section above the statewide average (PCH Safety Study).

PCH from the Ventura County line to Topanga

The city’s safety projects, the camera locations and the 2023 crash at Dead Man’s Curve give each segment a different set of evidence.

Trancas to Point Dume

The western end feels rural, and drivers treat it that way. Cameras monitor Decker Canyon and the stretch from Guernsey Avenue to Morning View near Point Dume. The city also plans temporary roundabouts at El Matador State Beach and Encinal Canyon Road, and it projects a 39% reduction in crashes and a 90% reduction in severe and fatal crashes at those locations (City of Malibu).

Beach parking here means people stepping out of their cars onto the shoulder while traffic passes at highway speed. If you were hit there, the scene will not stay the same for long, because roundabout construction at El Matador and Encinal will rebuild the very places investigators need to measure. Before that happens:

• Photograph the shoulder width, the parking stripe and any cones or construction signs
• Write down the nearest canyon road or beach access and the time of day
• Ask the deputy for the report number and the name of the agency writing the report
• Keep the parking receipt or app record showing when you arrived

Latigo Canyon to Malibu Canyon Road

Latigo Canyon is another camera location. Farther east, Pepperdine University sits where PCH meets Malibu Canyon Road (ABC7), adding students who walk, bike and drive at all hours to the commuters and weekend riders. The Civic Center and Cross Creek shopping area draws left turns across fast lanes. LA Metro Line 134 serves PCH from Trancas to downtown Santa Monica (Metro), so its bus stops also place riders on the shoulder.

For motorcyclists, this is where the canyon roads meet the coast. Malibu ranked first of 103 cities for injured riders in 2023, and the Sheriff’s or CHP report on a motorcycle crash is usually where the dispute over fault begins. Insurers in canyon-and-coast rider cases tend to argue about lane position and speed, both covered on our motorcycle accident page.

Dead Man’s Curve

On October 17, 2023, four Pepperdine students walking on the shoulder were killed on the curve between Las Flores Canyon Road and Carbon Canyon Road, a stretch CNN described as the most crash-prone on the 21-mile road. By that December, the memorial count of PCH deaths since 2010 had reached 58 (CNN). Within a month, on November 13, 2023, Malibu’s council declared a local emergency over PCH. The camera between Carbon Beach Terrace and Carbon Canyon covers this curve.

The students’ parents sued the State, Caltrans, the city and the county (ABC7). That list is instructive. PCH is a state highway, and when road design, missing barriers or shoulder conditions contributed to a crash, the case often involves a claim against a government body before it ever reaches a jury. Those claims carry a six-month deadline, discussed below. Our wrongful death page explains who may bring a claim when someone is killed on PCH.

The eastern end

In a work zone, lanes, flaggers and cones can shift from week to week. If your crash happened in one, the contractor’s traffic-control plan and the Caltrans project records should be added to the list of documents to request.

Questions from Malibu drivers, riders and pedestrians

A speeding driver hit me near Tuna Canyon. Will the camera prove it?

Possibly. The cameras exist to cite speeding drivers, and the program does not begin issuing tickets until late November 2026. Whether its data can be obtained for a civil case is a question to raise quickly, before any retention period expires.

I was walking on the shoulder. Does that make me at fault?

Not automatically. Walking on a PCH shoulder may be weighed as part of the fault picture, but under comparative fault it reduces a recovery rather than barring it (CACI 405). The four students killed at Dead Man’s Curve were also on the shoulder, and their families’ lawsuits challenged the road’s design as well as the driver’s conduct.

The driver was uninsured or drove away. What pays for my injuries?

Look first to the uninsured motorist (UM/UIM) section of your own auto policy. Malibu ranked fourth of 103 cities for hit-and-run injury crashes in 2023, so check your UM/UIM limits before an adjuster calls.

Who responds, who treats and where cases are filed

The CHP had no regular presence on Malibu’s stretch of PCH from 1991 until January 2024, when the city began paying about $2 million for a task force of three dedicated officers from the West Valley Area (City of Malibu; CHP). Enforcement rose sharply. Officers issued 4,790 citations in the first half of 2024, 3,404 of them for speeding (an increase of 82%), while PCH injury collisions fell to 41, 36% fewer than in the same months of 2023. Officers have clocked drivers at 115 mph.

Los Angeles County’s Superior Court routes a new injury case to the district where the harm happened, and for a Malibu stretch of PCH that is generally Santa Monica rather than downtown Los Angeles (LASC).

Deadlines when the State, Caltrans or the city shares fault

PCH is a state highway, and the defendants named after the Pepperdine deaths show how often a public body becomes part of these cases. A claim against the State, Caltrans, Malibu or Los Angeles County has to be presented to that body in writing no more than six months after the PCH crash (Gov. Code §911.2). If that deadline passes, a claim based on road design or shoulder conditions is usually lost, however strong it may have been.

The second deadline: The motorist who hit you can generally be sued for two years (CCP §335.1), and that period runs from the crash itself, not from the day Caltrans finishes its repairs.

Deadlines for children and for families bringing a wrongful death claim are calculated separately, so ask about them early.

Meeting a Malibu personal injury attorney while you recover

Call Jacob represents Malibu residents, Pepperdine students and visitors injured on PCH, whether the crash involved a car, a motorcycle, a bicycle, a rideshare pickup at Cross Creek or a pedestrian beside a beach parking lot. When a crash on PCH is fatal, we pursue the family’s wrongful death claim and the six-month claim against the State or Caltrans at the same time.

The Law Offices of Jacob Emrani, known to clients as Call Jacob, takes on these tasks while you recover in Westwood, in Thousand Oaks or at home:

• Requesting the Sheriff’s or CHP report and any task-force citation records
• Sending preservation letters for business and dashcam video along your stretch of PCH
• Collecting records from UCLA, Los Robles or whichever emergency room treated you
• Handling the other insurer’s calls, so that no one records your account of the crash while you are medicated in a trauma ward

A representative can visit you at home on Point Dume, on Carbon Beach or wherever you are recovering, and that first conversation costs nothing; our fee is owed only if we win. A Malibu car accident attorney is available at (888) 952-2952, and the online case evaluator lets you describe a PCH crash in writing. Spanish-speaking families will find our firm at calljacob.com/es.

Sources

1. PCH Safety — City of Malibu
2. QuickFacts — Census
3. Rankings results — OTS
4. PCH Safety Study — City of Malibu
5. Pepperdine parents sue — ABC7
6. Line 134 resumes — Metro
7. PCH deaths — CNN
8. Fire repairs — Caltrans
9. PCH Palisades repairs — Caltrans
10. CACI 405 — Justia
11. Area 580 — CHP
12. Designated centers — EMSA
13. PI hub notice — LASC
14. Gov. Code 911.2 — Legislature
15. CCP 335.1 — Legislature
16. About the campaign — Go Safely PCH

The rankings, projects and deadlines described above are offered as general information about PCH in Malibu. They are not legal advice about any particular crash.