Her Fault or Mine

**Collette** · 12-30-2008, 12:19 PM

I'm from New Mexico. I had an accident in a parking lot. It was pretty minor. There were no injuries. But I'm not sure what will happen and I'm curious if anyone knows any info that may help me. I was trying to back out of a parking space. I look over my left shoulder and it looked like there was a car sitting there waiting for me. So I look over my right shoulder and everything looks clear. I begin backing out. I was parked on a decline so I had to tap the gas to get the car moving but I immediately hit my brakes to slow me back down to about 3mph. I'm keeping on an eye on the car to my left to make sure I won't back into it. I was about 1-2 feet out of the parking space. My passenger immediately yells "stop!" I had maybe 1 seconed literally to react. But, I wasn't fast enough. A young lady in a Mustang came barrelling through the parking lot and now I had my rear bumper sitting in her passenger door. The damage was more significant to her car than mine. But even after the point of impact, it seemed like she kept going for at least a foot. I have a crack in the right side of my bumper and paint transfer starting from the right side almost to the midpoint of my rear bumper. A connector piece busted off of the left side of my bumper but thankfully it's still attached. It happened so quickly that I'm not for sure about who's fault it is. We've already started the insurance company stuff. Can anyone give their input?

**blewis** · 12-30-2008, 01:18 PM

USUALLY, the fault in such an accident is with the person backing up. NM law (as well as most other states) says:

Quoting 66-7-354

66-7-354 Limitation on backing.

The driver of a vehicle shall not back it:

A. unless the movement can be made with reasonable safety and without interfering with other traffic....

An accident is usually consider prima facie evidence that the movement was NOT made "without interfering".

However, if your insurance companies are involved, THEY will assess blame as they see fit (usually some fault is assigned to each driver), based on my experience.

Barry