Here’s the setup. There is a four lane road running east-west. It has a wide median, since a stream runs down the middle, so there is a short north-south “mini-street” at each intersection where one or two cars can wait while trying to cross traffic.
So, I’m waiting to cross traffic, pointing south. A woman in some behemoth SUV, traveling east, turns into the left-turn lane at the same intersection. She has to wait for me to cross traffic before she can turn north into the mini-street. East-bound traffic is not heavily, but is steady enough that I can’t cross safely.
The lady is getting impatient and starts waving at me to cross. If I had followed her encouragement, I’d have been T-boned, since there turned out to be cars on the blind side of her SUV.
Eventually, I cross safely, but I was wondering about who would be responsible if I understood her wave to be an “all-safe” signal and had a wreck on her blind side.
I recall a typical law about drivers who wave pedestraians through the crosswalk being liable if it was not safe to cross and the person gets hit.
Laws vary from state to state and you did not provide your location. Have you thought of contacting your Police and asking them?
WAG - Since America is so much a litigious country these days, a simple gesture of waving someone through may very well have repercussions for you as just being a nice person. No good deed goes unpunished. When in doubt, don’t wave them through.
FWIW, this is a fairly common type of accident–so common, in fact, that it has a name: A Good-Samaritan Accident. I filed accident reports for a city engineer for three years and I am now distinctly paranoid in these situations because of it. IIRC, in Michigan the driver who has been waved to will be the one cited. The accident report will read FTYROW, short for failure to yield right of way. Whether you’ve been waved through or not, it is still your responsibility to be sure the coast is clear. (However, I wouldn’t be suprised to see malicious waving prosecuted–but it would be pretty hard to prove.)
I won’t go as far as the previous poster did in advising against waiving another motorist through; however, if you are ever waived through, be very careful.
I know of a situation in Michigan where there was an accident because someone waved a car pulling out of a parking lot and into oncoming traffic, and the person pulling out was ticketed. States may vary, as others have said. I would assume the greater responsibility lies in the driver pulling out and not the waver, as a wave could too easily be misinterpreted (they were waving at someone else or gesturing or something, not waving you in.)
This happens a lot and it is why I don’t use others waving me on as an indicator at all. If I cannot see for myself that the way is clear, I don’t go. I also will not wave a car through unless they are only waiting for me, like I will wave them ahead of me in a line or merging into my lane. I will not wave people into oncoming traffic in case I cannot see, and I don’t trust other people to wave me into traffic either.
Something very similar happened to me, in Washington State. I was trying to make a left, a big Metro bus stopped and waved me through. Since the bus took up much more than a single lane at that particular location, I though I was fine. Nope.
Someone came flying by on the far side of the bus, hit my car, and it was my fault. Failure to yield. Then the big jerk tried to sue my broke student butt for more than $100,000 for soft tissue injuries to his big toe. Once he found out that all my assets were in the form of student loans and the car he totalled, he gave it up.
Thanks for the replies, folks. I had pretty much assumed that I would have been at fault and so I simply ignored the woman. But, she was getting quite adamant (oh hey, THAT’S where the singer got his name!) about me getting out of her way that I started wondering if she’d be willing to pick up the tab if things didn’t work out so well.
In practice, I never wave people (cars or pedestrians) through traffic. I do stare at them to let them know that I am aware that they are there and it won’t be me that hits them. But that’s all I do.
OK, I can’t stand this any more.
You wave with your hand to tell someone to go ahead; by doing so, you are waiving (giving up) the right-of-way to the other driver.
I can’t stand these idiots who think that they are being kind to others. The way to make life easier for those around you is to be predictable. This includes taking your right-of-way if you have it.
My mother was once waved through an intersection, only to have the the other driver plow into her. As she stood on the side of the road, the driver explained that she had decided (after waving my mother through) that my mother was not going to go, so she went first. :rolleyes:
I refuse to take a wave-through from a driver who has the right-of-way. If another driver waves me through, I just set there and shake my head at them until they go.
I was on the receiving end of this one a few years ago…
Dual lane divided road. Left lane is at a standstill since everyone in it is waiting to make a left turn. I am in the right lane proceeding at normal speed.
A car from the oncoming traffic lane turns left directly into my path. I barely got my foot to the brake before impact. Perfect dead-center T-bone collision. Did $5,000 damage to my car alone.
The occupants of the other car try to claim it is my fault and we wind up in court. They tell the judge that the car in the left lane waved them through. He tells them that, yes, that was nice of them, but that person had no legal right to do that. I had the right-of-way and it was their responsibility to make sure right-of-way was clear before entering the intersection, regardless of what the other person did.
The judge went so far as to say that he really wished that people wouldn’t be nice and “wave people through” since he thought it caused more accidents than it prevented. But he was pretty clear that it was their responsiblity.
