I come to a full stop at a stop sign. It is a T intersection. I signal left. The coast is clear. I have almost finished my left turn, am almost completely in the right hand lane when a car comes out of his driveway. The driveway is just to my left of the intersection, but essentially right accross the street. (the street I turned into has houses and driveways).
The drivers side front bumber of his car impacts the pure front (midline and just to passengers side) of my car.
Neither of us mentions a word about who is at fault. No police, no witnesses.
I think that since he was coming out of a driveway AND I had essentially completed my turn (implying I was in motion before he was) that it is clearly his fault.
He said nothing about fault but I got the impression that because I had a stop sign, and was turning, he thought it was my fault.
I think that, since he hit the front of your car, you weren’t as far through turning as you thought. The local road rules will dictate who you give way to at a stop sign. The Australian road rules require you to give way to any car “at or near the intersection”. There is no dispensation for vehicles leaving a driveway.
I should mention that he was going straight across two lanes of traffic into the road I was coming out of, and therefore driving in what would have been a very narrow “Z”. I think there is the assumption of an explicit stopsign at the end of drives, so that goes both ways, and I was in motion first.
Sounds to me that he was at fault, as you were already in the public roadway and he was just entering it from a private driveway. Here, you’d have the right-of-way.
To third what others have said, cars ON the roadway have the right-of-way over cars not on the roadway. It doesn’t matter if there’s a stop sign or not.
Besides, even if he were expecting you to be stopped at the stop sign, and that’s why he pulled out, you were already through the stop sign. And in any case, it doesn’t matter because he’s supposed to wait until the access is clear. You’re not supposed to wait for people to pull out of their driveways. I don’t see how this isn’t completely his fault.
Yup. Unless your laws are different from the rest of ours you are OK because:
He was entering a public roadway from a side street or private drive (spelled out pretty clearly in most states)
The fact that you were at least in the intersection before him grants you the right of way irrespective of whether he was leaving a driveway or pulling away from a stop sign as oncoming traffic. (you don’t get “Failure to Yield”/“Illegal Left Turn” unless he has NO signal or device commanding him to stop or yield, and leaving a driveway requires a stop)
My favorite, he had the last clear chance to avoid the accident: you were in a legally begun left turn and had your attention correctly focused on the road onto which you were turning. At best, he moved from a dead stop after watching you initiate and execute enough of your turn that you had crossed at least 1 1/2 lanes of traffic.
Either he didn’t see you (“Failure to See”) and entered the roadway unsafely or he caused the accident on purpose (“Vehicular Assault”) in which case you have to send me a case of Sol when you visit Mexico this coming January.
The funny thing is, he said he saw the car and just went anyway. I don’t know what he was thinking. Like I said, it is the drivers side front of his car that was damaged, the pure front of of mine. I had totally completed the left turn and was most of the way into my lane when he pulled out and hit me.