Sounds like an avoidable accident to me though it was her fault. You already saw that the person wanted to get over and that the driver was oblivious to people around her. You should have expected and been ready for what happened.
20-something years of driving, I average somewhere around 30k miles per year. In the past couple of decades, I've had ZERO accidents, except a deer that landed on the road 2 feet in front of my car. ZERO moving violations. Plenty of close calls that were avoided by ME being aware of my environment. He already stated he was aware that she was trying to move left. He put his car into a position to prevent her from doing that - barely. And completely ignores that many drivers don't have their rear view mirrors set properly & don't see that spot.
In other words, as I said above, the accident is her fault, but he could VERY easily have avoided it if he didn't drive like an ass.
This site describes the exact same situation:
http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~gdguo/driving/BlindSpot.htm
Except, in that case, the driver on the right side waited to move to the left lane. In the OP's case, he clearly witnessed her attempting to move into the left lane. I maintain that her mirrors weren't set properly AND the OP put himself into harms way.
If you see someone shooting a gun, and between pulls of the trigger, you jump in front of the gun, whose fault is it that you got shot? Clearly the person who pulled the trigger. But you're the moron who jumped in front of the gun. Driving in a manner to intentionally prevent someone from making a turn is aggressive driving.
Sounds like an avoidable accident to me though it was her fault. You already saw that the person wanted to get over and that the driver was oblivious to people around her. You should have expected and been ready for what happened.
Edit: or to put it another way in fewer words:
You saw she was trying to move left. You had two choices: give her space, or block her from moving left. You chose the latter. Accident happened. Nice going.
20-something years of driving, I average somewhere around 30k miles per year. In the past couple of decades, I've had ZERO accidents, except a deer that landed on the road 2 feet in front of my car. ZERO moving violations. Plenty of close calls that were avoided by ME being aware of my environment. He already stated he was aware that she was trying to move left. He put his car into a position to prevent her from doing that - barely. And completely ignores that many drivers don't have their rear view mirrors set properly & don't see that spot.
In other words, as I said above, the accident is her fault, but he could VERY easily have avoided it if he didn't drive like an ass.
This site describes the exact same situation:
http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~gdguo/driving/BlindSpot.htm
Except, in that case, the driver on the right side waited to move to the left lane. In the OP's case, he clearly witnessed her attempting to move into the left lane. I maintain that her mirrors weren't set properly AND the OP put himself into harms way.
If you see someone shooting a gun, and between pulls of the trigger, you jump in front of the gun, whose fault is it that you got shot? Clearly the person who pulled the trigger. But you're the moron who jumped in front of the gun. Driving in a manner to intentionally prevent someone from making a turn is aggressive driving.
Edit: or to put it another way in fewer words:
You saw she was trying to move left. You had two choices: give her space, or block her from moving left. You chose the latter. Accident happened. Nice going.
You're driving record may be good, but your reading comprehension sucks.
No, his comprehension is fine.
He's not saying the lady isn't at fault. What he's saying is that the OP could have realized that the lady needed to turn left and adjusted his driving and avoided the accident all together. Instead, it seems OP continued on oblivious to the events that happened just seconds before. Rather than slow down a bit and allow the lady to lane change, he obviously kept going. Now he's paying the price for not taking note of what others around him are doing. Sure he won't have to cover the repair bills but it's time without his vehicle and it's value will depreciate.
No, his comprehension is fine.
He's not saying the lady isn't at fault. What he's saying is that the OP could have realized that the lady needed to turn left and adjusted his driving and avoided the accident all together. Instead, it seems OP continued on oblivious to the events that happened just seconds before. Rather than slow down a bit and allow the lady to lane change, he obviously kept going. Now he's paying the price for not taking note of what others around him are doing. Sure he won't have to cover the repair bills but it's time without his vehicle and it's value will depreciate.
Hindsight is 20/20. Could he have known at the time she was definitely going to swerve into him? I'm sure he knew beyond a doubt she was going to swerve into his lane and he continue right into it.
OP witnessed her just try to pull the same stunt and miss side swiping the car in front of him. You don't need the gift of foresight when you are witness to that act.
And I'm not trying to shift blame. Just impart some wisdom to the OP (or rather, agree with DrPizza's assessment) that might save him the time and hassle that all accident's result in regardless of who's at fault. If you see a bad driver then give them space so you can react if they continue to display bad driving. Slowing down costs you nothing but less time than an accident will cost you.
I told the officer my side and when he came back after speaking to the other driver, he said that she said she didn't see me when trying to make the left.
She didn't see you most likely because she didn't even attempt to look properly. She failed to check her driver side blind spot and/or didn't have her driver side-view mirror set up correctly. With the little facts I've read here, she should be found to be 100% at fault. I hope your insurance company doesn't screw you over though...
Agreed. My main rant is although he could have saved himself the trouble, fault in the end is hers.
Just to play devil's advocate some more, I see plenty of retards slow down, signal like they want to move over and realize its the wrong street, they actually wanted to go into the other lane (don't ask, i dont know), etc. Sometimes people can swerve a bit when changing their radio, whatever. You don't know what the heck is going on.
OP could've saved himself a lot of time and money by taking a couple defensive driving classes.
As others have said, in situations like this where you had the opportunity to foresee what can happen, I would slow the fuck down and let the event unfold before you rather than dive head in and expect for the best.
It's hard to judge OP as to whether he could or could not have avoided it. Everything sounded like it happened really quickly and reaction time varies between people. Not only that, but OP may have thought he was in the clear after the lady failed the first time turning left. IMO it sounded like OP assessed the situation as best he could and I don't think anyone should blame OP in the least w/o actually being there and seeing what actually happened. Lastly, people like Dr.Pizza calling him an ass for not avoiding the accident is totally uncalled for.
I hate this crap when some idiot tries to justify something by using an idiotic and bogus example.....I hate this crap where if anything could have been avoided in anyway, the blame starts shifting over. No, if anything happens, it is the party who acts that results in the collision/accident/whatever who is at fault.
Guns can possibly be used by 5 year olds to shoot their sisters. Don't blame guns. Blame the parent for leaving a gun with a 5 year old unsupervised. If he had a knife and stabbed his sister, would you blame the knife?
Man robs liqueur store. It is not the liqueur store's fault for having a cash register full of cash!
Drunk driver rams his car into a house at the end of a cul de sac. WTF, why are the builders not leaving a through road?
I stubbed my toe on the nightstand getting up to take a piss at night. Why did my wife not buy the little motion sensor night light so I could see at night?
I'm going to give a slightly different reply:
You're an ass. At least when you're driving. You clearly saw that she was trying to make a left hand turn and realized there was a car along side her when she attempted to shift lanes. Rather than be polite and allow her to enter the lane, you apparently closed the distance to prevent her from entering your lane (otherwise she would have had plenty of room.) Well, at least it's pretty logical to assume this happened. Otherwise, your claim is that she was trying to turn left. Then decided, "no, I don't need to turn left." Then re-decided to turn left. While this accident was her fault, by the rules of the road, it was 100% preventable if you were a courteous (not to mention, defensive/intelligent) driver. But, you were in too much of a hurry, so now your car is damaged.