Who is liable when you are making a left turn at a stop sign but the other driver sped up and hit the rear of your car and witnesses claimed to have seen you stop at the stop sign and yield?

Answer 1

Almost 100% of the time, a vehicle that hits another in the rear is At Fault. I've never seen / heard of any case where the one in the back wasn't considered at fault (and therefore liable). Which direction was the other car traveling? Were you struck by a car traveling on the street you were turning from, or by one on the street you were turning onto? In the first case, the other driver is probably at fault if you were rear-ended by a car following you, or if the other driver was travelling in the opposite direction you must have been well into your turn before he reached his stop sign and should have allowed you to clear the intersection. On the other hand, if the other car was traveling on the cross street and did not have a stop sign, it is almost certainly your fault because even though you stopped, you did not have enough time to cross before the other car entered the intersection. The only way out of this is if the witnesses will also testify that the other driver increased his speed after you entered the intersection and intentionally rammed you. In the latter case, if you stopped and yielded to on-coming traffic, and then proceeded with due care, you are not at fault when another car was being driven too fast for the conditions and failed to yield to your vehicle already in the intersection. Just because you have a stop sign doesn't mean you have to wait for anyone coming from a safe distance. It is their fault if they have illegally reduced that safe distance by speeding, which is a violation of the law for that reason, and failed to yield to you properly in the intersection. Almost the exact situation occurred in front of my premises, where a speeding car on a frosty main street hit a car turning left from a stop sign side street at a T intersection (damage to side of entering car, not rear, but could easily have been rear in a split second). My surveillance tape clearly showed the driver was going over 50 miles per hour in a 30 zone, and my testimony (in three court appearances and a deposition) was that they were speeding up and then hit the horn instead of their brakes. The court concluded this was the cause of a collision they could have easily avoided through exercise of due care under the circumstances. The driver at the stop sign was cited for failure to yield, but the violation was dismissed because there was no evidence she had not property stopped and yielded to approaching traffic, as she and her passenger claimed.