Quote:
Originally Posted by sxyblue
So last night around 8:30PM I was cruising along a pretty dark street near my house. Three lanes a side, median and a break for turn traffic. I’m doing probably 35 in the middle lane with a car to my right one car length behind other wise no traffic. I’m passing by a hospital on the left hand side but even so the amount of street lights is pretty sparse. All of a sudden a 50s-ish dude in dark clothes appear in front of my headlights and I stomp on the brakes and am less than 5 feet from him as he panics and dashes past my car and then almost gets hit by the car next to me, who also slam on their brakes even though I’m sure they couldn’t see him.
At this point both of our cars had set off from a red light about a 1/4 mile ago and the guy has jaywalked more than half the road and has plenty of time to see us coming. More than that, we’re much easier for him to spot at night than he is for us to see.
I’m curious as to wether any liability or how much would have been to me in situations like this?
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Long and short it depend on where you live and the laws in your state and whether the person wants to make your life miserable. If the law says its not your fault does not preclude someone from making an issue of it and suing you. Also depend on insurance in your state.
I'll give you a stupid example that happen to a friend of mine.
my friend was drive home at night with his loaner BMW and hit a deer, generally not an issue covered under comprehensive. But the Cop who came on the scene decide it was not the deer's fault since there was sign down the down road that said deer crossing and my friend was driving too fast for condition (the conditions was deer could be crossing) so it was an at fault accident. Got a ticket and his insurance refuse to cover it under compressive the dealer deductible was $2000. Friend tried fighting the ticket, loss since the officer said his evidence he was driving too fast was the fact he hit the deer, judge bought it and my friend ended up having to pay to repair the loaner BMW.