Reply #35: That's not always true--here are two examples [View All]

[Rob H.]

I was involved in an accident where I was hit from behind and was ticketed for failure to yield right of way; the guy who hit me wasn't assigned fault for the accident, but he was drunk and got carted off to jail. (He was three sheets to the wind at 11:30 in the morning!) I went to court and got the ticket thrown out--here's why:

I was pulling onto a highway behind a pickup truck that was behind another pickup truck pulling a trailer. The driver who hit me was in the fast lane when the three of us pulled onto the highway, but the truck directly in front of me moved over into the fast lane to go around the slower truck pulling the trailer.

The approaching driver, seeing that, swerved over into my lane to try to go around him on the right. I was already squarely in the lane and had accelerated to about 45 mph (the speed limit was 55 mph, but I couldn't go any faster because of the slow truck in front of me). When the oncoming driver locked his brakes, I heard the screech of tires on asphalt just in time to try to gun it for the shoulder, but the oncoming driver still hit me. Neither of the truck drivers stuck around.

I have to assume that the fact that I was driving a black car on a newly-paved stretch of road--not to mention the fact that the guy was drunk and speeding--was why he didn't see me until it was too late.

Even though I got the ticket thrown out, I still had to pay my deductible and pay for my own rental car. I wasn't reimbursed until almost a year later, when the driver who hit me got convicted for DUI. He fought it as long as he could because he'd been convicted of drunk driving in another state and that was his third DUI conviction.

A little over a year earlier I hit someone from behind because he lost control of his car on wet pavement, spun out, and wound up in my lane. He'd originally been traveling in the opposite direction when the woman driving the car in front of him (that he'd been following too closely) hit her brakes to try to stop for a yellow light. When he hit his brakes, he lost control. The other driver, who imo caused the accident, drove on; even if the road hadn't been wet there was no way she would have been able to stop for that light. Both of us were fine (physically, anyway--my car was just over a year old and it was the first new car I'd ever bought) and he got the ticket and admitted that he was at fault.

Both accidents took place in Tennessee.

Edited for clarity.