Palo Alto Personal Injury Attorney

The region’s Level I trauma care is inside Palo Alto’s city limits, so a person hurt in a crash here can be treated without leaving the city. The decisions that shape an injury claim begin just as quickly. As Palo Alto personal injury attorneys, we give one piece of advice more than any other: protect the first three days, because that is when a bicycle, a phone’s ride data or a storefront video is easiest to keep and easiest to lose.

At a glance — Palo Alto

• Stanford Health Care is a Level I adult trauma center, and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford is Level I for children (EMSA)
• 9.5% of residents bike to work, the highest share in the Bay Area (Wikipedia)
• Four Caltrain crossings in the city are at street level: Alma Street, Churchill Avenue, Meadow Drive and Charleston Road
• Crash reports on El Camino Real and Alma Street come from the city police department in City Hall; the Bayshore Freeway belongs to the CHP

Questions cyclists and drivers ask

I was hit at a Caltrain crossing. Who could be responsible?

A driver who stopped on the tracks or went around the gates is responsible for that choice. If the arms or lights at the crossing failed, the agency that runs it may share responsibility, and a claim against a public agency must be presented within six months.

The driver’s insurer says I was riding in the wrong place. Does that end my claim?

It does not. A cyclist’s recovery shrinks only by the percentage of fault actually assigned to the cyclist, and video from a nearby shop or your ride-tracking data frequently settles where you were riding.

My crash was on Highway 101. Why doesn’t the city have my report?

The Bayshore Freeway is patrolled by the Highway Patrol, so the police department in City Hall never wrote a report for it. Request it from the Highway Patrol.

Does it matter that I was taken to Stanford instead of a smaller hospital?

It helps. A Level I chart usually includes imaging and specialist consultations from the first day, and that early record makes it harder for an insurer to say an injury appeared later or came from somewhere else.

The other driver works at Stanford Research Park. Does that change anything?

Possibly. A driver who was working at the time, such as traveling between meetings, may be covered by an employer’s insurance. An ordinary drive to the office is treated differently, so the purpose of the trip matters.

What to do, in order

At the scene

Palo Alto runs its own police department, with just under 100 sworn officers working out of City Hall (Wikipedia). Its officers take reports on El Camino Real, Alma Street, Embarcadero Road and other surface streets. A crash on the Bayshore Freeway or on I-280 goes to the Highway Patrol instead, and the report number on the officer’s card tells you which agency to ask for it later. At a grade crossing, the gates and warning lights are evidence too. Cars, bicycles, pedestrians and Caltrain trains share the same level at Alma, Churchill, Meadow and Charleston, so photograph the crossing arms, the signal lights and the tracks, along with the vehicles, before anything is moved.

Tip: Neighbors and passing drivers often move a damaged bike to the curb. Ask who took it and where it went. The frame, the wheels and the helmet show the angle and force of the impact better than any description.

At Stanford or Packard

Go to Stanford’s emergency department, or to Lucile Packard for a child, on the day of the crash, even if you rode or drove home afterward. Concussions and neck injuries from a fall onto pavement on Page Mill Road can take a day or more to show themselves, and an insurer reads any gap between the crash and the first exam as a reason to doubt the injury; our brain injury page lists the late-appearing signs of a concussion after a fall from a bike. Mention every sore spot to the emergency physician, since that first chart is what later records are measured against.

Saving the bike, the data and the video

• Request a copy of the report from the officers at City Hall
• Store the bicycle, cracked helmet and torn clothing as they are, without repairs
• Export ride-tracking data and phone photos to a second place
• Visit shops on University Avenue or California Avenue and ask about camera footage
• Write a page of notes on the signal, the turn and anything the other driver said
• Record whether a Caltrain train, a VTA or SamTrans bus, or a Marguerite shuttle was involved

Each of the city’s two downtowns has its own Caltrain station, and the blocks around University Avenue and California Avenue carry heavy walking and cycling traffic. Those storefronts are the most likely source of video, and their recorders write over old footage on a cycle, so the request should go out this week.

Calls from insurers

Your own policy requires notice to your insurer. The other driver’s insurance adjuster may call within days and ask for a recorded statement about the crash on Alma or at the Churchill crossing; you are not required to give it, and we would rather take that call for you.

Use the first week to find out whether the driver who hit you was working, because Palo Alto’s traffic is shaped by a few large employers. Stanford’s university and health system together employ about 18,000 people, the city’s largest workforce, and Stanford Research Park pulls technology commuters onto Page Mill Road every day (Wikipedia). A driver making deliveries, traveling between job sites or carrying passengers for an app or for the city’s Palo Alto Link service may bring a company’s coverage into the case, as our rideshare accident page explains in more detail.

What the 2022 figures show

In the Office of Traffic Safety’s 2022 comparison of 104 similar-size California cities, Palo Alto, with 67,609 residents in the 2025 Census estimate (Census), sits near the bottom of the table for overall harm. Rank 1 is reserved for the worst record, and collisions on the Bayshore Freeway and I-280 are left out (OTS 2022).

By most measures Palo Alto’s streets compare well with its peers. Bicycling is the exception. Cyclists accounted for 13 of the 112 people hurt or killed that year, and their category ranked worse than any other Palo Alto category against similar cities. The reason is the number of riders. The city ranks third in the country for bicycle commuting, after Davis and Boulder, and it has held Gold-level Bicycle Friendly Community status since 2003 (Wikipedia), so a larger share of the people hurt here are hurt on a bike.

We use the 2022 table on this page because the state’s 2023 listing for Palo Alto shows only a small fraction of the prior year’s victims, a gap that looks like incomplete reporting rather than a real change on the road.

Six months, two years, three years

1. Six months: the deadline to present a written claim if a city-maintained signal, sidewalk or street, or a Caltrain or VTA vehicle, played a part (Gov. Code §911.2).
2. Two years: the statute of limitations for a lawsuit over injuries from a private driver’s negligence on Embarcadero, El Camino Real or any other street (CCP §335.1).
3. Three years: property damage only, such as a bent bicycle frame or a crushed bumper; a child’s injury claim follows its own timing rules.

If a jury decided that a cyclist hit near the Charleston Road crossing bore 10% of the blame, that rider would still collect 90% of the proven losses, because California’s comparative fault rule apportions fault instead of barring the claim (CACI 405). If the claim has to go to court, the complaint is filed with the Superior Court of Santa Clara County (court website), which decides for itself which courthouse hears an unlimited civil case; that assignment is something a Santa Clara County personal injury attorney confirms for each Palo Alto filing.

Our work for injured cyclists and commuters

We represent cyclists, pedestrians, drivers and passengers injured in Palo Alto, including Stanford commuters on Page Mill Road and residents of Professorville and Barron Park. On a new Palo Alto case we obtain the police report and the Stanford or Packard chart first. For a cyclist, the work of a Palo Alto bicycle accident lawyer then turns to securing the bike and any video from the grade crossings or the two downtowns before it is gone.

Our work in the city goes beyond bicycle crashes. Drivers looking for an auto accident attorney in Palo Alto will find that we also handle:

• Car accidents on El Camino Real and the expressways
• Pedestrian injuries in crosswalks near the two downtowns
• Motorcycle crashes
• Collisions with Caltrain, VTA and SamTrans vehicles
• Rideshare cases, including Palo Alto Link trips
• Slip-and-fall injuries in stores and offices
• Wrongful death claims for families

When a city street or a transit agency is involved, our firm files the government claim well ahead of the six-month mark.

The first meeting is a free consultation, and we can hold it at your home in College Terrace, beside your bed at Stanford Hospital or wherever else suits your recovery. Because our fee is contingent, you pay nothing unless we win, and anyone looking for an injury lawyer near Stanford can reach a Palo Alto car accident attorney at (888) 952-2952, through our case evaluation form or, in Spanish, at calljacob.com/es.

Nothing on this page is legal advice; it is general information for people hurt on Palo Alto streets, at its rail crossings or on its bike routes.

Sources

1. Palo Alto’s July 2025 resident estimate — U.S. Census Bureau
2. 2022 OTS table for Palo Alto, used in place of the incomplete 2023 listing — California Office of Traffic Safety
3. Bike commuting, Caltrain crossings, Stanford Research Park and the police department — Wikipedia
4. Trauma list showing Stanford and Lucile Packard at Level I — California EMSA
5. Santa Clara County Superior Court home page — Santa Clara County Superior Court
6. Gov. Code §911.2, the six-month rule for a Caltrain, VTA or city street claim — California Legislature
7. Statute behind the two-year deadline for Embarcadero and El Camino crashes (CCP §335.1) — California Legislature
8. Jury instruction on a rider’s percentage of blame (CACI 405) — Justia