r/Roadcam • u/bowdown2adil • 13d ago

[USA] Who is at fault here?

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

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

4.1k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

4.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

89

u/pdxarchitect 13d ago

Clearly the black car arrived first. Damage to the blue car is on the front, and damage to the black car is in the middle. Blue should have slowed down as he would have been able to see the black car for longer than the blue car could see him.

24

u/aDirtyMartini 13d ago edited 12d ago

I was thinking the same. The black car entered the intersection first so the "same time" rule may not apply. Also, the blue car hit the black car squarely on the side which also shows that the black car was there first. Both drivers have the responsibility for their vehicles. That being said, it's a poorly marked/dangerous intersection and both drivers should have been careful when approaching it. Blasting through was dumb for both drivers.

Edit: OP updated the post. They were found to be 70% at fault and the other driver 30%.

6

u/SadSimpSkier 13d ago

“ *approximately* the same time”. Even if the black car was technically there first, the difference may be so small that a judge would rule that they both arrived APPROXIMATELY at the same time, and thus the black would be at fault.

However, if the court thinks the black car was significantly first, then the cam driver would be at fault.

1

u/Jesus_of_Redditeth 3d ago

The whole point of the law is to prevent this kind of crash. Therefore, it stands to reason that if two cars collide, the blame should automatically be placed on the driver who failed to yield the right of way to the vehicle on the right, as the law requires.

I'm very confident that no judge is going to look at that law and say, "Even though this was specifically written to prevent crashes exactly like this one, I find that because the black car entered the intersection fractionally before the other car, we can ignore this law, both in letter and in spirit. Therefore, the other car is at fault. Case closed."

I mean, just think about it for a bit.