Anaheim Personal Injury Attorney

Which Anaheim road users are hurt most often, compared with people in Long Beach, Fresno or San Jose? The state answers that question every year. In 2023, 19 people were injured or killed in Anaheim in collisions where the driver was under 21 and had been drinking, and only one of California’s 15 largest cities recorded more (OTS). The city placed fourth in three other categories: speeding, crashes after dark and alcohol involvement at any age. For anyone looking for an Anaheim personal injury attorney, those rankings show where an investigation should begin, whether you were a local driver on the 91, a family visiting the Resort District or a fan leaving the Honda Center.

Each figure in the table comes from the state’s 2023 report for the city (OTS). About 341,008 people lived in Anaheim in mid-2025 (Census), and that count does not include the tourists, convention guests and commuters who share its roads.

Who is most often hurt on Anaheim roads

1. People hit by a young driver who had been drinking. This is Anaheim’s worst category, second of 15, and these drivers often carry the least insurance. Another 109 people were hurt in crashes with a drinking driver aged 21 to 34, the fourth-highest figure among the large cities.
2. Resort District visitors. Disneyland has drawn more than 650 million guests since 1955 (Wikipedia). Many arrive in rental cars on unfamiliar streets or step out of rideshare vehicles at the curb.
3. Night drivers and passengers. Anaheim recorded 263 injury collisions between 9 p.m. and 3 a.m., one of the heaviest after-dark totals in the state.
4. Event crowds in the Platinum Triangle. Angel Stadium, the Honda Center and the Anaheim Convention Center send thousands of cars and pedestrians into the streets at once.
5. Older pedestrians. Sixteen people aged 65 or older were hurt or killed while walking in 2023, seventh of 15, even though the city’s overall pedestrian figure ranked a comparatively favorable 13th.
6. Drivers sharing the road with Anaheim Canyon trucks. The Canyon is Orange County’s largest industrial district, which puts tractor-trailers on the same streets as school traffic.
7. Freeway commuters. Three freeways cross the city, and an interchange just to the south carries hundreds of thousands of vehicles a day.

The questions visitors ask most are answered first below, followed by a closer look at each of these groups.

Questions from visitors, fans and residents

I was visiting from Arizona. Do California deadlines still apply?

Yes. A crash in Anaheim is generally governed by California law, including the two-year period to sue a private driver (CCP §335.1), no matter where you live.

If my case goes to court, which courthouse hears it?

Claims worth $35,000 or less proceed as limited civil cases (OC courts). A lawsuit seeking more is an unlimited case, handled by the county’s civil clerks at the Santa Ana civic center (OC courts). An Anaheim car accident lawyer will tell you early which track your claim is likely to follow.

My child was hurt at a crosswalk near the Resort. Where are seriously injured children treated?

A badly hurt child is usually taken to the Level I pediatric trauma team at CHOC (Wikipedia). Keep every discharge sheet. Follow-up care for children often continues for years, and the filing deadlines for minors differ from those for adults.

Young drinking drivers and limited insurance

A teenager or college student who drives after drinking usually has a minimum-limit policy, often as a listed driver on a parent’s plan. Serious injuries exceed those limits quickly. When that policy is exhausted, the underinsured portion of your own UM/UIM coverage is often what pays for the rest of a long recovery. Anaheim reported only 659 DUI arrests in 2023, 14th of 15, which suggests that many impaired drivers are identified only after they crash.

Tip: Ask the Anaheim Police Department whether a blood or breath test was taken at the scene. Those results are often kept in a separate lab record, not in the collision report you receive first.

Do I need the police report before I contact the insurance company?

No. An auto accident attorney in Anaheim can open the claim right away and add the report once Anaheim PD or the CHP releases it. The DMV’s SR-1 form is a separate obligation for each driver, and an Anaheim crash with any injury starts its ten-day clock (DMV).

Visitors, rental cars and rideshare pickups

Out-of-state visitors hurt near the Resort District often fly home long before the claim is resolved. A few points help:

• A rideshare driver with the app on is covered by Uber’s or Lyft’s commercial policy, which is far larger than a typical personal policy. How much applies depends on whether the driver was waiting for a request or carrying you, as our rideshare accident page describes.
• Hotel shuttles and park-and-ride vans are common carriers, and California requires them to use the utmost care and diligence toward passengers (Civil Code §2100).
• After a rental-car collision, the renter’s own auto policy, any credit-card coverage and the rental company’s liability coverage apply in a set order.
• Anaheim Resort Transit shuttles and OCTA buses both stop at ARTIC, the Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center (Wikipedia). OCTA is a public agency, so a passenger hurt on one of its buses has six months to present a written claim before any lawsuit (Government Code §911.2).

Police and hospital records can be requested by mail, so your claim can move forward after you return to Phoenix, Toronto or Houston.

Leaving Angel Stadium and the Honda Center

Game nights bring crowds, alcohol and darkness to the same few blocks, which is consistent with Anaheim’s fourth-place rankings for both nighttime and alcohol-involved crashes. We see parking-lot injuries, pedestrians struck in crosswalks near the arenas and collisions with drivers hurrying onto the 57.

Watch out: When an injury happens on stadium or arena property, the venue’s security video and incident reports are often the most important evidence, and operators rarely keep them long. Request them in writing within days.

The city’s “Safer Streets” notice about the state law that prohibits parking close to crosswalks (City of Anaheim) is relevant as well. On a crowded event night near the arenas, one illegally parked car at the corner can be the reason a turning driver never saw the person stepping into the street.

Do I have a claim if I crossed outside a crosswalk near the Convention Center?

Yes. A jury divides responsibility by percentage. If you were found 25% careless, your damages would be reduced by a quarter, and the remaining 75% would still be owed (CACI 405).

Canyon trucks and the freeway commute

Interstate 5 runs past the Resort area, SR-91 heads east to Riverside County and SR-57 passes the Platinum Triangle (Wikipedia). The CHP’s Santa Ana Area patrols the 91 and reports that about 540,000 vehicles a day pass through the “Orange Crush” interchange of the 5, 22 and 57 just south of Anaheim (CHP). If you were hurt in the lanes of the 5, 57 or 91, request the CHP Santa Ana Area report; Anaheim PD will not have one.

When a truck from Anaheim Canyon is involved, federal hours-of-service logs, electronic logging data and the employer’s liability all become part of the case. Those records shape truck accident claims, and carriers delete some of the data on routine schedules, so preservation letters should go out in the first week.

Hit-and-run, bicycle and motorcycle crashes

Not every ranking is grim. Anaheim placed ninth of 15 for hit-and-run collisions (171), ninth for injured bicycle riders (84) and tenth for motorcyclists (79). In a city this size, even a middle ranking means an injury hit-and-run roughly every other day. For those victims the first question is coverage, because a driver who flees leaves no policy behind. A household UM policy usually pays instead, and it requires prompt notice. Cyclists hit near ARTIC or on the frontage roads around the Canyon should keep the damaged bike and helmet as they are, because the damage shows angle and speed better than any sketch.

Anaheim Hills and fire season

Anaheim Hills burned in the 2017 Canyon Fire (Wikipedia). Evacuation traffic, ash on the pavement and failed utility equipment cause injuries quite unlike an ordinary collision, and a claim against a utility follows a different process. Our wildfire page explains it.

Sources

1. OTS Anaheim 2023 — OTS
2. Census V2025 file — Census Bureau
3. Anaheim overview — Wikipedia
4. Government Code 911.2 — Legislature
5. Crosswalk daylighting alert — City of Anaheim
6. CHP Area 675 — CHP
7. US trauma centers — Wikipedia
8. CCP 335.1 — Legislature
9. Filing rules — OC courts
10. Limited civil cap — OC courts
11. CACI 405 — Justia
12. Form SR-1 — DMV
13. Civil Code 2100 — Legislature

Anaheim readers should treat these rankings and rules as general information; they are not legal advice about your own case.

How Call Jacob handles Anaheim cases

The Law Offices of Jacob Emrani (Call Jacob) represents people injured in Anaheim, and we start with the evidence most likely to disappear: stadium and hotel video, rideshare trip data, rental agreements, truck logs and the Anaheim PD or CHP report. For clients hurt in the Resort District, we request records from Anaheim Regional Medical Center, West Anaheim Medical Center, Kaiser Permanente Anaheim or the Level I trauma teams at UCI Medical Center and CHOC in Orange (Wikipedia). Anaheim’s rankings shape that work: most of our cases there involve drinking or speeding drivers, but we also take rideshare and shuttle claims, truck collisions from the Canyon, pedestrians and cyclists, motorcycle crashes and wrongful death actions for families.

If an adjuster reaches you at your hotel or at home, you can simply refer the call to us; once you hire us, those calls come to our office instead. Your first meeting with us is free, and our fee comes only from a recovery we obtain for you. If you live in Anaheim Hills or West Anaheim, a representative can come to your home; visitors can talk with us by phone after returning to their home state. Resort visitors heading home can reach us at (888) 952-2952 from the airport or fill in the case evaluator once they land; Spanish-speaking families in Anaheim can begin at calljacob.com/es.