Orange County
Irvine Personal Injury Lawyer
Irvine is a planned city, and it was planned for bikes as much as cars. That makes it one of the better places in the county to ride, and it means a lot of the people hurt here were riding, walking or running when it happened.
A city built for bikes, and the crashes that come with it
The city maintains more than 100 miles of off-street bike trails and close to 290 lane-miles of on-street bike lanes. Trails like the Jeffrey Open Space Trail run through the middle of town, and the UC Irvine campus puts thousands of students on bikes, scooters and e-bikes every day.
Where a trail meets a street, a driver turning right or pulling out of a driveway is looking for cars, not for a bike coming at twenty miles an hour. That is the classic Irvine crash, and the driver's insurer will usually say the rider came out of nowhere. Read bicycle accidents and e-scooter accidents for how those arguments are answered.
The 5, the 405 and the toll roads
The 5 and the 405 meet at the El Toro Y on Irvine's eastern edge, one of the busiest freeway junctions in the county, and the 133, 261 and 73 toll roads all run through the city. Merging, lane changes at speed and stop-and-go traffic make rear-end and sideswipe crashes routine.
If you were rear-ended, liability is usually the easy part. What the insurer will fight is how badly you were hurt.
Who writes the report
- City streets — the Irvine Police Department
- The freeways and the toll roads — the California Highway Patrol
- On the UC Irvine campus — the UC Irvine Police Department
Get the report number at the scene if you can. If not, note the agency, the date and the nearest cross streets or exit.
Hospitals
Irvine has emergency departments at Hoag Hospital Irvine, Kaiser Permanente's Irvine Medical Center, and UCI Health — Irvine, which opened in December 2025. The most serious injuries are usually taken to a trauma center instead: UCI Medical Center in Orange, the county's only Level I adult trauma center, or Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo.
Wherever you were treated, ask for your records and keep every bill and discharge sheet.
Where the case would be heard
Irvine has no civil courthouse of its own. An injury lawsuit from a crash here is heard at the Central Justice Center in Santa Ana, with the rest of the county's civil cases. The office in Aliso Viejo is a short drive down the 5.
Call Boyd
The first conversation is free, it obligates you to nothing, and Boyd takes it himself, in English or Spanish. If you do not need a lawyer, he will tell you that too. This page is also in Spanish.
injured? let's talk.
Free consultation. No fees unless we win.