Determining “fault” is part of determining who pays for damage to the vehicles involved, and it won’t be the pedestrian, who has the right-of-way by default in many (most?) situations.
In some situations. Many people take that to mean that they may just flop out into the middle of the road at their desire. Depending on this intersection, the pedestrians may not have had the right of way.
If Car A is waiting to make a left turn, sees a gap in oncoming traffic, notices no obstructions on the road to which he is about to turn and no pedestrians waiting with a right of way, he has violated no law or breached no duty to anyone by proceeding to make a left turn. He is doing exactly as he is supposed to do and cannot be said to have acted negligently or with “fault” at all.
Pedestrians don’t just materialize out of thin air. If they were crossing the street at the same time Car A was turning, then they had to have either been standing at the intersection waiting to cross, or at least been walking towards the intersection at approximately the same time Car A started to turn. In either case the driver of Car A should have seen the pedestrians who looked like they intended to cross, and waited for them to cross before starting the turn.
Should have, at least. As I asked a few posts ago, was Driver A’s view obscured of them? Or, as was noted in post #1 (before the OP noted that this wasn’t a hypothetical), the pedestrians were apparently children, who may have simply darted out onto the road, rather than walking across like “normal” adult pedestrians.
Though, if, as a driver, you see kids near the road you’re going to turn in to, you’re responsible for being even more careful, as they have tendencies to be both unpredictable and oblivious to danger.
Well, that’s the classic Defensive Driving cliche: Sure, you’re technically correct, but you’re also still dead.
I had one asshole yelling at me a few months back, because I didn’t just step out in front of him. As a pedestrian, I was preparing to cross his right-turn lane, and looked to see what the oncoming traffic was like. I was using a cane at the time due to some knee problems, so I knew I’d be slower than normal crossing.
Dude was quite far away, but approaching at well over the posted speed limit, so I already knew he was a bit of an idiot. I paused to assess the situation, to see if he’d slow down when he saw me there. Of course, being an idiot, he didn’t slow down even a smidge, or give any sign at all that he even knew I was there. Well, there was no way I was stepping out in front of him, because I knew if he kept coming at that speed, I’d never make the other side of the road.
Turns out, he did see me, and ended up having to come to a complete stop to let me cross, and he was quite pissed at this, and went out of his way to confront me over it.
But I just told him to go fuck himself - if he’d made even the most basic adjustments to show me he knew I was there, I could have crossed before he got all the way to the intersection. But because he wanted to be tough guy speed demon, that wasn’t going to happen.
So I technically had the “right of way”, but there was no way I was going to exercise it under those conditions.