Veh. Code, § 21956 · Chapter 5. Pedestrians’ Rights and Duties
Veh. Code, § 21956
Text — As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
(a) A pedestrian shall not walk upon a roadway outside of a business or residence district otherwise than close to the pedestrian’s left-hand edge of the roadway.
(b) A pedestrian may walk close to their right-hand edge of the roadway if a crosswalk or other means of safely crossing the roadway is not available or if existing traffic or other conditions would compromise the safety of a pedestrian attempting to cross the road.
(c) (1) A peace officer, as defined in Chapter 4.5 (commencing with Section 830) of Title 3 of Part 2 of the Penal Code, shall not stop a pedestrian for a violation of this section unless a reasonably careful person would realize there is an immediate danger of a collision with a moving vehicle or other device moving exclusively by human power.
(2) This subdivision does not relieve a pedestrian from the duty of using due care for their safety.
(3) This subdivision does not relieve a driver of a vehicle from the duty of exercising due care for the safety of any pedestrian within the roadway.
Notes and commentary — not statutory text
History
Amended by Stats. 2022, Ch. 957, Sec. 12. (AB 2147) Effective January 1, 2023.
Source of truth
- Edition
- As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
- Official file
- https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=VEH§ionNum=21956.
- Text hash
- sha256 48e77e9691cc8c828af55e24395a346f4ddff4f12e4f09f29acb6024d32409c1
- Composed by
- compose_ca.py 2026-10-22: the Legislative Counsel's CAML content files read by a tokenizer (caml_readers.reader_a); an independent xml.etree reading (caml_readers.reader_b) agrees on every section
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