Charleston Personal Injury Lawyers

The department assigns a patrol team to each area of the city. Downtown north of Calhoun Street belongs to Team 1, and downtown south of it to Team 2. Team 3 works James Island and Johns Island. West Ashley falls to Team 4, Daniel Island to Team 5 and the Central Business District to Team 9. Team substations do not have staff around the clock, the department notes, and mail goes to 180 Lockwood Boulevard.

City limits do not take in every part of James Island or Johns Island. The Town of James Island is its own municipality, too. A crash on either island may therefore reach a city officer, a deputy or a trooper, depending on the exact spot. Frost Law Group also takes on West Ashley car crash claims, where some addresses fall inside city limits and others do not.

The city FAQ offers two ways to start, a call to the Records Office or a visit to headquarters. A police report costs $5, and crime victims pay nothing for their own incident reports. Staff expect a state-issued ID and enough detail to find the right file, such as the date, time, location and people involved. Bring the case number from the officer's card if you have one.

Section 56-5-1300 calls for report forms detailed enough to show the cause, the conditions and the people and vehicles involved. SCDMV also sells the state's copy for $10 on Form FR-50, since Section 56-5-1270 sends it the officer's report. Frost Law Group can request both copies to compare them.

SCDOT's 2024 counts put 95,700 vehicles a day on the I-26 segment that ends at Heriot Street. Between Heriot Street and Mount Pleasant Street the count was 88,800. From Cypress Street to US 17, it was 68,000. Those are daily averages, and a crash report shows the conditions at one moment.

Picture a driver who brakes hard on that stretch of I-26 near US 17, and the car behind rear-ends it. Section 56-5-1930 requires the following driver to keep a reasonable and prudent gap for the speed and the traffic. A sudden stop by the lead car can still matter, since comparative fault looks at both drivers. How a jury would split the fault rests on the proof, and nobody can forecast it from the roadside.

SCDOT labels US 52 Spur as East Bay Street. Its 2024 estimate for the stretch ending at US 17 was 28,300 vehicles a day. Meeting Street south of its US 52 section, secondary route S-107, carried 16,900 down to South Battery Street. Calhoun Street carried 19,500 between Barre Street and Rutledge Avenue. On downtown streets, drivers turn, park and pull out throughout the day.

Section 56-5-3810 allows backing only when it can happen safely and without interfering with other traffic. Section 56-5-2530 bars stopping or parking on a crosswalk. It also bars stopping in the lane beside a car already parked at the curb, apart from the situations the statute lists. Suppose a driver backs out of a King Street space into a passing car. Frost Law Group can test that driver's account against the damage pattern and any storefront camera.

Jack C. Frost started as a Summerville police officer and corporal. Later, at the Charleston County Sheriff's Office, he moved from deputy to master deputy to detective. His fourteen years on the job showed him how an officer turns statements, photos and measurements into a narrative. They also sharpened his eye for the question a downtown report leaves open, such as which car was moving at the moment of contact.

SCDOT's file labels US 52 as Meeting Street on the peninsula and as Rivers Avenue farther north. One trip on that route can start in one city and end in another. Frost Law Group also represents people in injury claims in North Charleston, where a different police department answers under Section 56-5-1260. So the agency named on the report decides which records office holds the copy.

Paint is not what makes a crosswalk. Section 56-5-500 treats the part of an intersection joining the sidewalk lines on each side as a crosswalk, marked or not. Any crossing drawn on the pavement counts too. At a corner with no working signal, Section 56-5-3130 has drivers yield to a walker in the crosswalk on their half of the street. The duty also reaches a walker coming so close from the other half as to be in danger. A Walk signal, under Section 56-5-990, gives the person facing it the right of way over all drivers.

Turning traffic on a green light must also yield to pedestrians lawfully inside an adjacent crosswalk, under Section 56-5-970. Picture a driver turning onto Calhoun Street who strikes a woman crossing on the Walk signal. Frost Law Group also handles pedestrian crash claims in Summerville under these statutes. The walker's own conduct still counts, and a lawyer weighs it before offering any view.

Charleston County crash reports in 2024 counted 116 bicyclist victims, and 4 of them died. That is a countywide figure, not a city total. On the roadway, Section 56-5-3420 gives a cyclist the rights and duties of a driver, except where the bicycle article says otherwise. The Charleston Police Department also registers bicycles at its Records Office on Lockwood Boulevard for $1, and a registration record can help show who owned a bike after a crash. The same FAQ says the city installed more than 100 public bike parking spaces, including five bike corrals, on King Street between Calhoun and Spring streets.

Bike Lanes and a Safe Operating Distance

A driver may not block a marked bike lane against oncoming bicycle traffic, under Section 56-5-3425. Before entering or crossing that lane, the driver has to yield to any cyclist in it. Section 56-5-3435 adds a standing duty to keep a safe operating distance from any bicycle. No distance in feet appears in the statute, so the facts of each pass decide whether the gap was safe.

A Car Door Opened Into a Rider's Path

Under Section 56-5-3822, nobody may open a car door until doing so is reasonably safe and leaves moving traffic unimpeded. The statute speaks of any person. So it reaches a passenger climbing out of a rideshare as well as a driver. A witness or a storefront camera can show how quickly the door swung into the rider's path.

MUSC describes its University Medical Center as four hospitals. They are the Institute of Psychiatry, the Children's Hospital, Ashley River Tower and University Hospital. A patient's care after a crash may involve more than one of them. So a records request should name the University Medical Center and every date of care, not just one building. Missing pages from any part of the stay give an insurer room to question when an injury began.

Roper Hospital, at 316 Calhoun Street, runs an emergency department around the clock and has 332 inpatient beds. It does not appear on DPH's trauma center list, and neither does Bon Secours St. Francis Hospital, another city hospital with round-the-clock emergency care. A records request to Roper covers its own chart only, apart from any MUSC request. After a transfer to MUSC, the file should hold the first hospital's chart and the transfer paperwork as well.

Of the city's courts, only the Court of Common Pleas on Broad Street hears an injury suit above $7,500. Two other courts carry names that invite confusion. The municipal court shares police headquarters on Lockwood Boulevard, and the Charleston City Magistrate on Meeting Street belongs to the county rather than the city. A traffic hearing in either building is a separate matter from the injury case.

Traffic Charges at 180 Lockwood Boulevard

The City of Charleston Municipal Court shares the police headquarters address, 180 Lockwood Boulevard. SC Courts limits municipal courts to ordinance cases and offenses punishable by no more than a $500 fine or 30 days in jail. It also says those courts have no civil jurisdiction. Section 56-5-6160 keeps evidence of a traffic conviction out of every civil action. So the outcome of a ticket at Lockwood Boulevard does not settle fault in the injury case.

The Charleston City Magistrate on Meeting Street

Despite its name, the Charleston City Magistrate at 101 Meeting Street is a county magistrate court. It is separate from the municipal court. Magistrates hear civil claims of $7,500 or less under Section 22-3-10. A dispute over a dented bumper might fit there, while a claim for surgery and lost wages usually needs the circuit court.

The Census Bureau's 2025 estimate made Charleston the most populous municipality in South Carolina, at 159,423 residents. Of those, 16,691 lived in Berkeley County. City officers' 388 Berkeley County collisions in 2024 included 1 fatal crash, 5 serious injury crashes and 90 other injury crashes. A Census Bureau address lookup places 225 Seven Farms Drive on Daniel Island inside the city and inside Berkeley County. A suit over a crash on that side of the line may belong in Moncks Corner instead, at the Berkeley County Courthouse on California Avenue. Charleston and Berkeley share the Ninth Circuit, and Frost Law Group handles cases in each county.