Who Is At Fault

[d2dave]

A person I know was involved in a minor prang. She was reversing out of an angle park when she hit a car that was going against a NO ENTRY sign.

Who is at fault?

[DBT]

Were both vehicles drivable following the collision?

Did Police attend?

I ask because it may be difficult either way to "prove" fault, unless police attend and call it.

In which case just claim on ur insurance and claim other driver is at fault.

I had a prang a few years ago and the "at fault" party was in dispute. We called police who established no one was injured and both cars were drivable. They couldn't leave fast enough. They advised us to "just sort it out with our insurance companies, cause if they had to do paperwork, someone was going to cop a neg driving".

My repair bill turned out to be over $4k. I told insurance what the cops said. I was not charged an excess.

[d2dave]

No it is only minor. I am only asking as this discussion came up tonight with a group at the local footy club.

Every one in the group were adamant that the car doing the illegal turn was at fault, based on what he was doing was not legal, but I am not 100% sure.

I base my thought on this. Many years ago I lived on a bend on a very busy road in Melbourne. I had no off street parking so the only legal place to park was on the road side.

However this was dangerous so I chose to illegally park on the nature strip.

I did however have concerns being parked illegally, that if some one did hit me I might be at fault. I sought legal advice and was told being illegally parked does not give a person the right to run into my car.

So I am basing my thought on my OP question that just because a vehicle is turning illegally does not give a person the right to reverse into him.

Interested in others opinions. Do we have any legal eagle's amongst us?

[Blknight.aus]

The person operating the vehicle in reverse.

[GuyG]

I'd agree with Dave, vehicle A - the one reversing out onto the road has to give way to all others - vehicles/pedestrians/cyclists - already on the road regardless of whether they were breaking the law or not.

[Disco Muppet]

^X2
Person entering shouldn't have been there, but the reversing party still have a responsibility to ensure they don't hit anything/one whilst executing their maneuver.
Unless you can prove she had reversed and was stationary and the person entering the parking area actually hit her.

[Homestar]

If it was a car park off the road, and no one witnessed it, it would be impossible to prove one way or the other. In most carpark prangs blame ends up being split 50/50, no matter who was at fault.

[JDNSW]

Both drivers are at fault - reversing is always at fault, and going against a "no entry" is also automatically at fault.

Same sort of situation with two cars that collide when both are backing out of opposite slots in a car park.


In both cases however, you have to distinguish between fault and "cause". Any accident will have multiple causes (in this case including the attention paid by the drivers, the layout of the road, the design of the cars, action of passengers, weather, time of day etc), but whether any particular one of these is the legal "fault" is another matter.


John

[amtravic1]

Was car B doing a U turn. If so I believe they would be in the wrong. In Victoria at least the rules for a U turn are very clear and simple. Vic Road Safety Rules 2009 states simply "Vehicles doing a u turn must give way to all vehicles and pedestrians "

There is no ifs buts, point, clauses. A simple one sentence law.

I have successfully just challenged an insurance company who tried to blame us when a driver did not give way to my learner daughter. I told them to go and read the law and I had the incident on camera and they just went away.

[JDNSW]

Was car B doing a U turn. If so I believe they would be in the wrong. In Victoria at least the rules for a U turn are very clear and simple. Vic Road Safety Rules 2009 states simply "Vehicles doing a u turn must give way to all vehicles and pedestrians "

There is no ifs buts, point, clauses. A simple one sentence law.

I have successfully just challenged an insurance company who tried to blame us when a driver did not give way to my learner daughter. I told them to go and read the law and I had the incident on camera and they just went away.

And the same law applies to a reversing driver - as I said, both.