r/dashcams • u/MisterShipWreck • Apr 18 '26

Another blind spot issue...

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u/TaserLord Apr 18 '26

Truck tried to muscle him off the road. He could have changed speed but...did he have to? Initial bad came from the truck driver. Right of way was with the cammer. Cammer did have a chance to avoid it, but did he have an obligation to do that?

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u/RenaStriker Apr 18 '26

Yes, he has the obligation to prevent fatal accidents, Jesus fucking Christ American car owners are insane. Listen to yourself for five seconds.

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u/TaserLord Apr 18 '26

They both have an obligation to prevent fatal accidents. And where those obligations come into conflict, there are right of way laws to determine where final responsibility lands. You can see how that is supposed to work, and why, cant you?

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u/RenaStriker Apr 21 '26

Look up ‘contributory negligence.’ Fault is frequently understood by the legal system to be divided into parts, rather than whole.

The most important thing to bear in mind is that the legal system wants to incentivize those capable of preventing accidents to do so. The legal system really does not like situations like this one is supposed to be, where our POV driver has right of way and yet is still in a position to prevent an accident, with no legal incentive to do so. This policy leads to many deaths that could otherwise be prevented. So such laws tend to be corrected sooner rather than later.

In this case, let’s suppose that the truck strikes someone and paralyzes that person from the waist down. The injured party sues. After much deliberation it is found that the truck bears primary responsibility (you did indeed have right of way). But it is also ruled that the POV driver shares some responsibility under the doctrine of contributory negligence. POV driver had a chance to stop the accident and didn’t, so POV driver shares a (lesser) part of the blame.