I faced an interesting situation yesterday where as far as I can tell I had no legal way to get out of. I’m just curious what my defense would have been had I actually gotten a ticket.
I’m driving east-bound on a city street and go to turn left into the store
I enter the left-hand turn lane (probably 50 to 75 meters before the turn into the strip mall). At that point there is a sign that says “Left lane must exit.” This entry point is the only way into the parking lot
When I get to the point where I’m going to make the turn, I see a sign on the entrance into the parking lot that says something along the lines of “Do not enter. Delivery and construction vehicles excepted”
In addition, on the median is a no U-turn sign.
:dubious:
Obviously, the signage folks didn’t put everything together, but that raises the question, if I had’ve gotten a ticket, is there a defense for not having any alternative? The crux of the matter is that the “delivery and construction vehicles excepted” sign is not visible at the time when you enter the left-hand turn lane, so you don’t know that you’re stuck until it’s too late.
I’m not sure that the ‘Do not enter’ sign has as much force legally as the ‘no U turn’ and ‘must exit’ signs. I mean, vehicles CAN enter that way, only the stores want to limit it to construction and delivery vehicles.
I’d say that if you turned left, you would not be subject to a ticket since you only violated the rules of the parking lot. If you had re-entered traffic, or made a u-turn, you would have violated the rules of the city street, and could get a ticket.
I assume the parking lot was for a (private) business, so the DNE sign probably did not hold any real authority (at least, in a ticketing by the local cops sort of way). It’s similar to a stop sign in such a parking lot – great traffic control device, but there’s no consquences to running the sign (assuming you don’t get into an accident).
Judges are human (most of them, anyway), and tend to look for that which is reasonable. I don’t think you’d have any problem so long as you didn’t do something stupid or dangerous. For that matter, most police officers would assess the practicality of the situation and not bother trying to ticket you.
The sign in the parking lot doesn’t reflect traffic law, but the wishes of the lot’s owner. Perhaps you could be considered to be trespassing if you enter there and you’re not in a qualified vehicle, but I seriously doubt anyone would make an issue of it.
I found myself in a similar situation a while back; only after negotiating the one-way system to get to the car park at a hospital did I discover that it was a multi-storey one and did not offer sufficient headroom for my vehicle; the options were:
1: Ignore the signs and jam my vehicle into the entrance.
2: Reverse up and drive the wrong way down one of two possible feeder lanes.
Of course it wasn’t actually a choice at all - but that didn’t stop everybody yelling at me.
