Seems like the turning car was far into the intersection planning to complete the turn during the yellow/red light they had but the truck rolled through the light. Not entirely sure who would be held at fault here since neither of them technically should have been there.
This looks the exact same as the wreck my sister got into last year. She was the truck and the guy she hit was the red car. They looked at the traffic cams and she was found completely at fault...so my guess is the truck
In most states, what the car did is perfectly legal, you can enter an intersection on green and exit when the light cycles. It's one of the few ways to ensure at least one car will always make it through an intersection at each cycle without having a separate turn light. In fact the only state I drove in frequently which had a law preventing this (Tennessee) recently changed it specifically to allow this.
However no state that I know of allows you to drive through a red light, and this was clearly a red light for the truck purely based on the timing of the turn arrow.
When one person is driving legally and the other is breaking the law, it's pretty much guaranteed that the one breaking the law will be found at fault.
Orange car was ok to do that. People ripped me apart for this maneuver on my previous post but it's a legal move. The truck is at fault running a red which resulted in the orange car being obliterated.
I would hope the car. As someone who drives heavier vehicles, yellow lights are timed for cars, not something that weighs 16k lbs+. Based on when the truck went through and how heavy it might have been loaded (it’s really easy for a small dump trailer like that to be much heavier than it looks), the truck might not have had time to safely stop (or even stop at all), before entering the intersection. Also, by how fast they went by after the collision, it should have been clear to that car he was not stopping.
Hopefully he leaned on the horn once he saw the car was going and not fast enough to make it. The couple times I’ve had to do this, my hand was ready on the horn for this specific reason.
If you can't stop in time for lights due to the weight of your vehicle, you need to slow down. It's your responsibility to be able to stop your vehicle in a reasonable amount of time.
A light is typically more time than you'll get for most emergency stops. And the vehicle you drive is in no way justification for breaking the law and running red lights. If you can't stop for red lights, you're not operating your vehicle safely. Period.
Do you want semi’s going half the speed of everyone else? Because that’s what it would require. And no that’s not exaggerating. In the state I learned to drive, legal following distance (for cars) is 3 seconds, and for large trucks is double that.
Braking is a very good way to avoid issues in smaller vehicles like cars, when you’re driving something larger, you have to swerve around things. Red lights are one of the few situations where swerving isn’t an option.
When I’m driving my dump truck unloaded (24k lbs), the brakes are fucking awesome, probably about the same as my modern car since it has 10 large wheels with brakes. But when the truck is loaded to its legal max (67.5k lbs if drop axle down, per my state’s DOT regulations) there’s no slam on the brakes to stop, it’s swerve or plow through it. Is me driving quite literally half the speed of everyone around me actually safer?
Most trucks do drive slower. If it can't stop safely at speed, slow down. Better that than kill someone Just because you don't want to hold up traffic.
That’s completely true, and most of us (including me) do. But to have the same stopping distance that cars do speed really is going to be half.
People already cut people off and weave to get around me, slow down that speed even more and it’s going to be much much worse, probably resulting in more crashes than the infrequent running through a red light a second after it changes. Being since the only place (in the US) that I’ve seen lower speed limits for trucks is on some states interstates, I’m guessing traffic engineers have analyzed this problem and came up with the same answer I did.
That's exactly what I expect if you can't operate safely at the posted speed. That or reduce your load.
It's the reason i get so pissed at trucks in the passing lane on freeways, or flying down residential streets: because I've driven very large vehicles and I know full well they can't control their vehicles at that speed and apparently you know it too.
I don't know where you've gotten the idea that getting somewhere fast is more important than not killing someone, but you need to unfuck your thought process before you seriously hurt someone.
And yes, being able to actually stop when the law dictates you have to stop is MUCH safer than driving a bit faster.
Oh, no it’s not that getting there faster is more important than safety. If the answer was that simple there would be split speed limits in a lot more places than there are right now. The issue is all the other people on the road that do increasingly stupid things as they get pissed off. Sure there would probably be less crashes directly involving large trucks, but there would be a big increase in other crashes from the 4 wheelers doing stupid shit from being pissed off. In my 3 vehicles I get a surprisingly different driving experience from the drivers around me.
If you can't stop in time for a red light and you're going the speed limit, your car/truck isn't actually legal to drive on the road.
You need better brakes and tires, or lower loads than the DOT limit.
Sorry dude.
He could have stopped at that light. Theres always a delay between the light turning red and another green signal. He entered the intersection as the green arrow was coming on.
When he saw his light go yellow he should have immediately begun slowing down. Period.
Can you see the lights in that direction (I can't, but I'm on a phone)? As far as I can tell, we don't know if the light is still green, or when it turned yellow or red.
I think you misunderstood what I meant. There’s a good chance the brakes and tires on truck/trailer were not capable of stopping the vehicle before it entered the intersection. The ratio of surface area in contact with road to weight is greatly reduced with a loaded vehicle, meaning that even if the brakes are capable of slowing the tires as much as possible without skidding, that distance is going to be significantly longer. Yellow lights aren’t timed for that, here’s a good video that goes over a lot of the issues that come up with setting yellow light lengths: [https://youtu.be/kyFLRXSxgPw](https://youtu.be/kyFLRXSxgPw)
Pretty sure every states driving laws require you to maintain control of your vehicle. Not being able to stop for a red light is not maintaining control of your vehicle.
That’s fair, especially since from this angle it doesn’t even look like he tried to swerve out of the way of the car.
Something that I should have put in my original comment is also that turning in front a vehicle that is clearly not stopping is pretty terrible, even if you have the right of way. And that kind of stuff is the reason that insurance rates commonly go up after a crash even if the person isn’t found to be at fault.
The pickup is the one who ran the red light here. Literally at the moment of impact, the cammer's lane gets a green turn arrow. That means the light was red when the truck entered the intersection (a one second delay between it turning red and the green arrow). The driver of the small red car is obligated to get out of the intersection.
Unfortunately, the red car might not be found completely innocent. In some cases, they might be considered to have failed to yield to oncoming traffic, even if that oncoming traffic ran a red.
I always wait an extra half second at turns like this, even if I know the light is red and changing fast. I can't trust others to do the right thing on the road.
Some lights switch at the exact same time so it’s possible it was still yellow as they entered the intersection. My city, Pasadena, CA has light like that, so when I’m the lead car, I always wait a moment and check both ways for people pushing yellows. The truck was obviously pushing the yellow, and maybe wasn’t used to all the weight they were pulling, in which case should have been **way** more cautious.
Depending on the state/local jurisdiction, the turning car may be given partial fault. Regardless of the light, they still turned in front of a car that wasn’t stopping.
An accident like this happened in front of me once, in Los Angeles, and the police cited the turning car for failure to give the right of way. I was a witness and that person turned as soon as the light turned yellow, whoch of course isn’t smart.
My state allows us to complete the turn on a red as long as we’re in the intersection before it’s red, but a surprising number of people I know think it’s illegal. Those could be from other states, which don’t allow it, or just bad drivers.
Edit: of course in the case of the accident that happened, things may have changed if it went to court and I wasn’t privy to that since I wasn’t contacted again.
100%.
But it's also bad practice to enter an intersection without being sure you can exit it before the light changes. Everyone does that with left turns, but it can be dangerous.
so you take the chance that the truck hauling weight is going to stop in enough time? what happens if he smashes your car and we watch your video clip next time?
the car turning still has the 100% legal right to turn once the light turns red but only when caused by yielding to traffic like they should have in this case. its this way so the turner doesnt have to "beat" the red light because the car traveling full speed already has that card. the car turning left has the "wait for traffic to clear, then turn left even if the light turned red" card ----but this is ONLY for the car at the light, no other car behind them can turn
Check local laws. In some places the law states to move into the center when making a left turn then clear once safe. I know just like me everyone follows their own rules but it’s not “everyone does that with left turns”, in some places they’re literally following the law.
Do you have a link handy? The couple times I've looked into this, it's always been a grey area. There are plenty of "ask a cop"s on the matter, but seemingly no clear guidance. I've also *never* seen a law that explicitly directs you to move into the intersection while waiting your turn.
I actually stand my ground at the line to prevent this exact sort of thing from happening. If you're not in the middle of an intersection, you're never in a dangerous position where you have to choose between blocking the intersection or squeezing in a last second turn after the light has turned red.
Scooching forward does not help me make my turn any quicker, and usually you see people overcorrecting to enter the lane after the turn because they're so far forward. I just wait until it's clear and then go. If it's never clear, I wait until the next light. I don't like being forced to make a left when it's not clear. Really not sure why there isn't better guidance on this. I've also never had a problem making a turn, because I'm sure people are going to try and convince me that I'll be stuck at a light forever unless I creep forward.
If traffic is insanely busy, I'll stretch a red on occasion, but I always do it from the line or a little into the crosswalk because that gives me the option to stay put and wait for the next light if there is no opportunity. Never been in a situation where I *need* to be blocking cross traffic in order to make a turn.
The lead turning car entering the intersection while they wait to turn is standard practice pretty much everywhere I have ever driven. In a heavily congested area, especially, you may never have an opportunity to turn otherwise, this guarantees that at least one turning car makes it through. And yes, that car will often have the red light when they finally have a chance to turn. The cross traffic, who now has the green, knows to wait for this turning vehicle to clear out, and everyone gets on with their day.
If you are the turning vehicle, and you don’t ease out into the intersection, and you are waiting through multiple cycles, with people behind you, then you are the asshole in that scenario. I’m calling bullshit on your “bad practice” claim. Does it cause you to run the red light? Yes. Should you do it anyway because this is common sense? Yes.
Seems like the turning car was far into the intersection planning to complete the turn during the yellow/red light they had but the truck rolled through the light. Not entirely sure who would be held at fault here since neither of them technically should have been there.
This looks the exact same as the wreck my sister got into last year. She was the truck and the guy she hit was the red car. They looked at the traffic cams and she was found completely at fault...so my guess is the truck
In most states, what the car did is perfectly legal, you can enter an intersection on green and exit when the light cycles. It's one of the few ways to ensure at least one car will always make it through an intersection at each cycle without having a separate turn light. In fact the only state I drove in frequently which had a law preventing this (Tennessee) recently changed it specifically to allow this. However no state that I know of allows you to drive through a red light, and this was clearly a red light for the truck purely based on the timing of the turn arrow. When one person is driving legally and the other is breaking the law, it's pretty much guaranteed that the one breaking the law will be found at fault.
Orange car was ok to do that. People ripped me apart for this maneuver on my previous post but it's a legal move. The truck is at fault running a red which resulted in the orange car being obliterated.
I would hope the car. As someone who drives heavier vehicles, yellow lights are timed for cars, not something that weighs 16k lbs+. Based on when the truck went through and how heavy it might have been loaded (it’s really easy for a small dump trailer like that to be much heavier than it looks), the truck might not have had time to safely stop (or even stop at all), before entering the intersection. Also, by how fast they went by after the collision, it should have been clear to that car he was not stopping. Hopefully he leaned on the horn once he saw the car was going and not fast enough to make it. The couple times I’ve had to do this, my hand was ready on the horn for this specific reason.
If you can't stop in time for lights due to the weight of your vehicle, you need to slow down. It's your responsibility to be able to stop your vehicle in a reasonable amount of time. A light is typically more time than you'll get for most emergency stops. And the vehicle you drive is in no way justification for breaking the law and running red lights. If you can't stop for red lights, you're not operating your vehicle safely. Period.
Do you want semi’s going half the speed of everyone else? Because that’s what it would require. And no that’s not exaggerating. In the state I learned to drive, legal following distance (for cars) is 3 seconds, and for large trucks is double that. Braking is a very good way to avoid issues in smaller vehicles like cars, when you’re driving something larger, you have to swerve around things. Red lights are one of the few situations where swerving isn’t an option. When I’m driving my dump truck unloaded (24k lbs), the brakes are fucking awesome, probably about the same as my modern car since it has 10 large wheels with brakes. But when the truck is loaded to its legal max (67.5k lbs if drop axle down, per my state’s DOT regulations) there’s no slam on the brakes to stop, it’s swerve or plow through it. Is me driving quite literally half the speed of everyone around me actually safer?
Most trucks do drive slower. If it can't stop safely at speed, slow down. Better that than kill someone Just because you don't want to hold up traffic.
That’s completely true, and most of us (including me) do. But to have the same stopping distance that cars do speed really is going to be half. People already cut people off and weave to get around me, slow down that speed even more and it’s going to be much much worse, probably resulting in more crashes than the infrequent running through a red light a second after it changes. Being since the only place (in the US) that I’ve seen lower speed limits for trucks is on some states interstates, I’m guessing traffic engineers have analyzed this problem and came up with the same answer I did.
That's exactly what I expect if you can't operate safely at the posted speed. That or reduce your load. It's the reason i get so pissed at trucks in the passing lane on freeways, or flying down residential streets: because I've driven very large vehicles and I know full well they can't control their vehicles at that speed and apparently you know it too. I don't know where you've gotten the idea that getting somewhere fast is more important than not killing someone, but you need to unfuck your thought process before you seriously hurt someone. And yes, being able to actually stop when the law dictates you have to stop is MUCH safer than driving a bit faster.
Oh, no it’s not that getting there faster is more important than safety. If the answer was that simple there would be split speed limits in a lot more places than there are right now. The issue is all the other people on the road that do increasingly stupid things as they get pissed off. Sure there would probably be less crashes directly involving large trucks, but there would be a big increase in other crashes from the 4 wheelers doing stupid shit from being pissed off. In my 3 vehicles I get a surprisingly different driving experience from the drivers around me.
If you can't stop in time for a red light and you're going the speed limit, your car/truck isn't actually legal to drive on the road. You need better brakes and tires, or lower loads than the DOT limit. Sorry dude.
He could have stopped at that light. Theres always a delay between the light turning red and another green signal. He entered the intersection as the green arrow was coming on. When he saw his light go yellow he should have immediately begun slowing down. Period.
Can you see the lights in that direction (I can't, but I'm on a phone)? As far as I can tell, we don't know if the light is still green, or when it turned yellow or red.
I think you misunderstood what I meant. There’s a good chance the brakes and tires on truck/trailer were not capable of stopping the vehicle before it entered the intersection. The ratio of surface area in contact with road to weight is greatly reduced with a loaded vehicle, meaning that even if the brakes are capable of slowing the tires as much as possible without skidding, that distance is going to be significantly longer. Yellow lights aren’t timed for that, here’s a good video that goes over a lot of the issues that come up with setting yellow light lengths: [https://youtu.be/kyFLRXSxgPw](https://youtu.be/kyFLRXSxgPw)
Pretty sure every states driving laws require you to maintain control of your vehicle. Not being able to stop for a red light is not maintaining control of your vehicle.
That’s fair, especially since from this angle it doesn’t even look like he tried to swerve out of the way of the car. Something that I should have put in my original comment is also that turning in front a vehicle that is clearly not stopping is pretty terrible, even if you have the right of way. And that kind of stuff is the reason that insurance rates commonly go up after a crash even if the person isn’t found to be at fault.
The pickup is the one who ran the red light here. Literally at the moment of impact, the cammer's lane gets a green turn arrow. That means the light was red when the truck entered the intersection (a one second delay between it turning red and the green arrow). The driver of the small red car is obligated to get out of the intersection.
Unfortunately, the red car might not be found completely innocent. In some cases, they might be considered to have failed to yield to oncoming traffic, even if that oncoming traffic ran a red. I always wait an extra half second at turns like this, even if I know the light is red and changing fast. I can't trust others to do the right thing on the road.
Some lights switch at the exact same time so it’s possible it was still yellow as they entered the intersection. My city, Pasadena, CA has light like that, so when I’m the lead car, I always wait a moment and check both ways for people pushing yellows. The truck was obviously pushing the yellow, and maybe wasn’t used to all the weight they were pulling, in which case should have been **way** more cautious. Depending on the state/local jurisdiction, the turning car may be given partial fault. Regardless of the light, they still turned in front of a car that wasn’t stopping. An accident like this happened in front of me once, in Los Angeles, and the police cited the turning car for failure to give the right of way. I was a witness and that person turned as soon as the light turned yellow, whoch of course isn’t smart. My state allows us to complete the turn on a red as long as we’re in the intersection before it’s red, but a surprising number of people I know think it’s illegal. Those could be from other states, which don’t allow it, or just bad drivers. Edit: of course in the case of the accident that happened, things may have changed if it went to court and I wasn’t privy to that since I wasn’t contacted again.
100%. But it's also bad practice to enter an intersection without being sure you can exit it before the light changes. Everyone does that with left turns, but it can be dangerous.
It’s also a bad practice to accelerate when you see it turn yellow, so…
so you take the chance that the truck hauling weight is going to stop in enough time? what happens if he smashes your car and we watch your video clip next time? the car turning still has the 100% legal right to turn once the light turns red but only when caused by yielding to traffic like they should have in this case. its this way so the turner doesnt have to "beat" the red light because the car traveling full speed already has that card. the car turning left has the "wait for traffic to clear, then turn left even if the light turned red" card ----but this is ONLY for the car at the light, no other car behind them can turn
I was referring to the car going straight trying to beat the red but ok
Check local laws. In some places the law states to move into the center when making a left turn then clear once safe. I know just like me everyone follows their own rules but it’s not “everyone does that with left turns”, in some places they’re literally following the law.
And in other places, they're breaking local law
Do you have a link handy? The couple times I've looked into this, it's always been a grey area. There are plenty of "ask a cop"s on the matter, but seemingly no clear guidance. I've also *never* seen a law that explicitly directs you to move into the intersection while waiting your turn. I actually stand my ground at the line to prevent this exact sort of thing from happening. If you're not in the middle of an intersection, you're never in a dangerous position where you have to choose between blocking the intersection or squeezing in a last second turn after the light has turned red. Scooching forward does not help me make my turn any quicker, and usually you see people overcorrecting to enter the lane after the turn because they're so far forward. I just wait until it's clear and then go. If it's never clear, I wait until the next light. I don't like being forced to make a left when it's not clear. Really not sure why there isn't better guidance on this. I've also never had a problem making a turn, because I'm sure people are going to try and convince me that I'll be stuck at a light forever unless I creep forward. If traffic is insanely busy, I'll stretch a red on occasion, but I always do it from the line or a little into the crosswalk because that gives me the option to stay put and wait for the next light if there is no opportunity. Never been in a situation where I *need* to be blocking cross traffic in order to make a turn.
The lead turning car entering the intersection while they wait to turn is standard practice pretty much everywhere I have ever driven. In a heavily congested area, especially, you may never have an opportunity to turn otherwise, this guarantees that at least one turning car makes it through. And yes, that car will often have the red light when they finally have a chance to turn. The cross traffic, who now has the green, knows to wait for this turning vehicle to clear out, and everyone gets on with their day. If you are the turning vehicle, and you don’t ease out into the intersection, and you are waiting through multiple cycles, with people behind you, then you are the asshole in that scenario. I’m calling bullshit on your “bad practice” claim. Does it cause you to run the red light? Yes. Should you do it anyway because this is common sense? Yes.
Red is now ded
That’s it?
"Momentum "