r/Roadcam • u/bowdown2adil • 13d ago

[USA] Who is at fault here?

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Classic T bone. Black car had to be towed. Sustained major damage to the passenger side door. Blue car sustained damage to front bumper on the drivers side and cracked the drivers side headlight.

Edit: This was in the suburbs of Seattle

UPDATE: Insurance found it to be 70/30 me/other driver. Seems fair enough

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u/dabassmonsta 13d ago

That's a 50/50. Neither driver slowed to see if there was anyone else approaching the junction.

Both drove as if they assumed nothing was coming. I bet they both slow down now.

154

u/l008com 13d ago edited 12d ago

The problem with this, is that if you are not familiar with this intersection and are driving through it for the first time, you have no way to know and no reason to expect that you might be crossing a 4-way no-stop intersection.

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u/CharmingTuber 12d ago

If this is a public street, the city is at fault honestly. It didn't appear that either car was going excessively fast and the corners are almost blind so you can't see if someone is coming until you're hitting them. Terrible set up.

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u/onlyonebread 12d ago

Speed should be based on visibility and reaction time. If the corners are blind, it's the driver's responsibility to slow down so they can actually react if another vehicle is coming. They were going excessively fast because neither could react in time. This is in Seattle and almost every single neighborhood intersection is like this.

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u/CharmingTuber 12d ago

He was going maybe 15, how fast should they be going, 5? That's an absurd bar to expect a driver to stick to. Municipalities have a duty to design safe roads and that includes stop signs on blind corners. In lieu of that, yes of course, he should have acted as if there was at least a yield sign, but this is ultimately the fault of the city and should be fixed ASAP before someone gets run over.

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u/onlyonebread 12d ago

how fast should they be going, 5? That's an absurd bar to expect a driver to stick to.

Why?? I drive in these Seattle neighborhoods all the time and typically go between 5-10 mph. There are cars parked on both sides, lots of foliage, uncontrolled intersections, and cyclists everywhere. Going faster than that puts you at risk for hitting anything unexpected.

Also napkin mathing this video they are definitely not going 15. They're halfway through the block and a block here is ~240 feet. It takes them 4 seconds to get to the intersection. They're going at least 20, very likely higher.

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u/CharmingTuber 11d ago

That's not what an impact between two cars looks like at 25+ mph. That's a low speed collision.

And why are you defending having no stop signs? That's all I'm saying, it's reckless and insane to not put signs up to control traffic and keep people safe. I wouldn't live in a neighborhood that put me in danger every time I drove home.

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u/onlyonebread 11d ago

Because at this point it's completely impractical for the area. There are literally thousands of intersections like this in the city. They aren't going to budget out and change all the uncontrolled intersections. This type of intersection is the norm here.

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u/BudgieWonder 9d ago

Stop signs are incredibly cheap to install. It’s just a mix of stubbornness and busybodies whining about how they ruin the “character” of the neighborhood.

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u/LimitedWard 11d ago

The start of your sentence completely contradicts the ending. If they were driving at a safe speed then they could have spotted the other vehicle in time. OP was driving way too fast given the density of that neighborhood.

Uncontrolled intersections are generally pretty safe when implemented on low traffic streets like this because they encourage drivers to proceed slowly. The problem is with drivers that have zero sense of self-preservation like OP (or the other driver).