Thread: Who is at fault?

My second collision if anyone is interested, I think demonstrates that things are not always clear cut and sometimes insurance companies just pay up rather than making a fuss.

I was making a right turn across three lanes of traffic.
The traffic was all stopped by a red light.
They had all left the intersection open. There was sign at the intersection that said they should do that. (I've forgotten the exact wording)
I made it safely across two of the lanes of traffic.
What I didn't expect was that someone in a red Honda Prelude would come racing up the last lane near the gutter. (At the speed you would expect the driver of a red Honda prelude to drive.)
Consequently I hit him on the driver's side mudguard.
Both cars were still quite drivable but he wanted to make a big deal of it by leaving his car blocking the lane and ringing the police.
When they arrived, they were not impressed and told him to move his vehicle immediately. As it was such a minor incident, if I remember correctly, they just told us to exchange details and to report the incident to our local station.

I got a letter from his insurance company claiming that it was going to cost some enormous amount of money to fix the Honda. All the local panel beaters I spoke to reckoned the figure was greatly inflated.

I gave all the details to my insurance company, especially the bit about the Honda driver entering the intersection in contravention of a road sign.
They apparently did some investigating and came to the conclusion that they couldn't mount a strong enough argument that I was not at fault.
Everybody's insurance company just paid for their own repairs.

I suppose that in the eyes of the law I failed to make a right turn with due safety.
I believe the other driver ignored a road sign and a rule about entering an intersection when he wouldn't be able to drive out of the intersection.

In spite of the legal wrongs and rights of the situation, I still believe that in the circumstances I had good reason to expect that I could cross the intersection safely.

Anyway that was 10 or 15 years ago, so it doesn't really matter does it.

Originally Posted by mcrover

Not in Cranbourne.....

On 3 occasions so far with the locals they have just brushed us off and not done a thing, once with the DH's accross the rd doing burnouts in the T intersection near my house and smoking out the street, even with photo's and rego numbers as well as videos of the same bloke riding his quad bike up and down the street they say "we cant do anything" and disappear out the back without even taking any details.

I tried reporting some suspect Emails and they wouldnt even tell me who to contact so I rang Packanham instead who were very helpfull.

MrsMc had a stupid chick drive into her Carolla in a carpark while she was stationary and even though there was no rego lable on the car, the driver admitted it wasnt her car and wouldnt give any details other than her phone number so she went to report it to the local's and they fobbed her off as well and told her they couldnt do anything..

There are better cops around than what we have here I hope your one of them Huckster

Sorr to hear that you have dramas down your way Macrover, I guess it's ike any type of service, you get good and bad. I always try and treat people the way I'd like my family to be treated if they present themselves at a police station with a problem.

Hucksta

Originally Posted by joel_nicholson

By saying anything relating to fault or responsibility, you've given perfectly admissible evidence for someone to sue you. It more "legal trickery" to provide an answer as that gives the other party something to work with.

Sorry - that's untrue - at least in NSW. You can apologize in any negligence situation and it can't be used against you in court.

This was changed to allow people to say they are sorry and for the other party to accept it and help them move in. It's especially relevant in medical negligence cases.