Irvine Personal Injury Lawyer

Kubota & Craig is a personal injury law firm at 16530 Bake Parkway, Suite 100, in Irvine, near the Irvine Spectrum and the I-5/I-405 interchange. Founding partners Yoshiaki C. Kubota and Cynthia A. Craig personally handle every matter the firm accepts. We represent people seriously injured across Irvine — on the freeways, on the arterials, and across one of the largest bike networks in Orange County — and we build every case on its own evidence: the police report, the scene and vehicle evidence, the video, and the medical records that show how the collision happened and what it cost you.

Why Irvine Injury Cases Call for Local Investigation

No two Irvine crashes are alike, and neither are the roads, agencies, and records behind them. High-speed toll roads and arterials, heavy commuter and UCI-area traffic, and one of the region's most-used cycling networks mean the evidence that decides a case is usually local and specific. Here is what Irvine's own records show — and why gathering that evidence early matters.

What Irvine's Recent Bicycle and E-Bike Collision Data Shows

Irvine has built one of the most extensive cycling networks in the region — more than 100 miles of off-street trails and over 250 miles of on-street bike lanes — and its collision data reflects how heavily those routes are used. According to an Irvine Police Department collision analysis prepared in October 2025, bicycle- and e-bike-related collisions rose from 91 (Jan–Sep 2024) to 101 over the same period in 2025 — about 11%. E-bikes drove most of it: e-bike collisions climbed from 58 to 66, while conventional-bicycle collisions rose from 29 to 32.

Of the 66 e-bike collisions listed for 2025 year-to-date, 53 carried an injury classification. Young riders are heavily represented — a majority of the city's bicycle collisions involved juveniles, and roughly 69% of e-bike collisions involved riders ages 13 to 16. The factors IPD most often recorded for e-bikes included unsafe speed, riders emerging from driveways, alleys, or bike paths, improper turns, and signal or sign violations.

For an injured rider — or a driver in a collision with one — those factors are where a claim is won or lost. Whether a bike emerged from a driveway, who had the right of way, and how fast each party was traveling are fact questions that turn on the police report, video, and physical evidence gathered early. Being listed as a contributing party in a police report does not, by itself, decide a claim.

Irvine Roads and Speed Conditions

In a 2026 engineering and traffic survey, City staff evaluated 120 roadway segments and recommended lowering the posted speed on 56, keeping 35 unchanged, setting new limits on 27, and raising only 2. The recommendations touched roads Irvine drivers know — segments of Jeffrey Road, Irvine Boulevard, Portola Parkway, Bake Parkway, and Jamboree Road were among those recommended for reductions. These are staff recommendations from the survey, not necessarily the limit posted on a road today — but they reflect measured travel speeds, and speed drives both crash severity and liability.

Campus Drive: A City-Identified Irvine Collision Hotspot

When Irvine studied where its most serious crashes cluster, one corridor stood out. The City's Local Roadway Safety Plan identified Campus Drive between University Drive and Turtle Rock Drive — a 1.8-mile, four-lane corridor near UC Irvine carrying roughly 13,500 to 20,500 vehicles a day and heavy bicycle traffic — as a collision hotspot. Based on 2015–2019 historical collision data, that segment recorded 78 injury collisions, including 11 in which someone was killed or severely injured, 18 bicycle-injury collisions, and 8 pedestrian-injury collisions — among the highest collision densities in the city, with about 69% tied to intersections. We point to Campus Drive because it is Irvine's own finding, not a guess.

What We See in Our Own Irvine Cases

The patterns in Irvine's public data are the same ones we work with in our own cases. In the Irvine injury claims we handle, the real fight is almost always over fault — how the collision happened, and who could have avoided it. On a bicycle or e-bike case, that usually means establishing whether a rider emerged from a driveway or bike path, who had the right of way at a signal, and how fast each party was traveling. On freeway and arterial collisions, it comes down to speed, following distance, and lane position. Those are the same factors Irvine's police and roadway records highlight — and they are settled by evidence, not assumptions.

How We Investigate an Irvine Crash

Because the outcome usually turns on evidence, we move quickly on the things that disappear. We obtain the police report and any CHP or Irvine PD supplemental records, request nearby business or traffic-camera video before it is overwritten, preserve vehicle event-data and e-bike data where it exists, and document the scene, sightlines, and signal timing. In serious cases we work with reconstruction and medical experts. Knowing which agency wrote the report and which records the City and County keep is part of doing this well in Irvine.

Injury Cases We Handle in Irvine

• Car accidents — Rear-end and turning crashes on the I-405, I-5, and arterials like Jeffrey, Jamboree, and Culver.
• Bicycle & e-bike accidents — The collision patterns in Irvine's own police data: driveway emergence, unsafe speed, right-of-way.
• Pedestrian accidents — Intersection and turning conflicts near the Spectrum, UCI, and the Great Park.
• Motorcycle accidents — Riders on the 133, the 241, and canyon roads.
• Truck accidents — Commercial and delivery trucks serving the Irvine Business Complex and Spectrum.
• Uber & Lyft accidents — Rideshare pickups at John Wayne Airport and the Spectrum and their layered insurance.
• Slip and fall — Falls at Irvine's shopping centers, apartment complexes, and business parks.
• Dog bites — California's strict-liability dog-bite law in Irvine's parks and neighborhoods.
• Construction accidents — Ongoing development around the Great Park and the Irvine Business Complex.
• Brain & catastrophic injury — High-speed crashes causing traumatic brain and spinal injuries.
• Wrongful death — When a crash or dangerous condition takes a life.

Filing an Injury Claim Arising in Irvine

Injury lawsuits arising in Irvine are filed in the Orange County Superior Court. Venue follows the injury, not your address — a crash on Jamboree Road is an Orange County case even if you live in Riverside or Los Angeles County. Most unlimited-civil injury cases are heard at the Central Justice Center, 700 Civic Center Drive West, Santa Ana; only cases formally designated "complex" go to the Civil Complex Center. Under the court's current local rules, many non-evidentiary proceedings — case-management and status conferences, law-and-motion — can be handled by remote appearance, while trials and evidentiary hearings are generally in person unless the court orders otherwise. Most cases settle before trial, and your attorneys handle the procedure either way.

Deadlines That Apply to Irvine Cases

Three clocks control most Irvine injury claims:

• Two years to file a personal injury lawsuit, from the date of injury (Code of Civil Procedure § 335.1) — car crashes, falls, dog bites, product cases.
• Three years for property damage (Code of Civil Procedure § 338) — a separate clock; a crash that injures you and damages your car creates two claims on two timelines.
• Six months to present a claim when a public entity may be responsible (Government Code § 911.2). The entity then has 45 days to respond; no response is treated as a denial, and you have six months from a rejection to file suit. Late-claim relief exists but is narrow.

Claims Against a Government in Irvine

Some Irvine injuries involve a government defendant — a dangerous road condition, a malfunctioning traffic signal, an OCTA bus, or a hazard on public property. Those cases require a written claim to the correct entity within six months. The hard part is identifying which one:

• City of Irvine — city streets, sidewalks, parks, city-controlled traffic signals, and city vehicles; claims go to the City Clerk on the City's Claim for Damages form.
• Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA) — OCTA buses and operations, through OCTA Risk Management.
• Caltrans / the State — the I-5, I-405, and the state routes, through the State's Government Claims Program.
• The toll roads are the trap. State Routes 73, 133, 241, and 261 are operated by the Transportation Corridor Agencies but owned and maintained by Caltrans, with CHP enforcement. Both agencies are public entities on the six-month clock, so a toll-road injury usually means presenting a claim to both — not guessing between them.

Filing against the wrong entity does not stop the clock on the right one.

Serious Injuries and Orange County Trauma Care

In a serious Irvine crash, where a patient is taken matters. Orange County EMS maintains a list of designated trauma receiving centers for patients who meet trauma criteria — including UCI Health in Orange and Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo. A designated trauma center is not simply the nearest emergency room; the destination depends on injury severity, EMS protocols, and circumstances. For a catastrophic injury, those trauma and hospital records become central medical evidence.

A Personal Injury Firm Based in Irvine

Yoshiaki C. Kubota (California Bar #175555) has more than 30 years of trial experience and has been named to Super Lawyers every year since 2010 and Best Lawyers in America since 2025. Cynthia A. Craig (California Bar #226318) is a Super Lawyers and Best Lawyers honoree recognized for her work on behalf of injured clients. Both partners are personally involved in every case — you work with the attorneys, not a case manager.

What Our Irvine Clients Say

Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case depends on its own facts.

Irvine Personal Injury FAQ

Areas We Serve

Kubota & Craig represents injured clients throughout Orange County from our Irvine office. See our areas we serve for full coverage.