And you can raise all of this at trial. Whether it will convince a judge that you were not in violation of the section or not, no one can say. All you can do is try to raise reasonable doubt and see what happens.
- Carl
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And you can raise all of this at trial. Whether it will convince a judge that you were not in violation of the section or not, no one can say. All you can do is try to raise reasonable doubt and see what happens.
- Carl
The other driver said you ran the stop sign. Thing is, you did. If you stop, then proceed before it is safe then you have violated the stop sign rule.
Any person who is adjudicating this case will accept that the accident itself is proof of the fact that it was not safe for you to pull out.
Just because you didn't see the car doesn't mean it wasn't there. And quite clearly, it was.
Try this exercise... Next time you are at the intersection and looking that direction you need to figure out how far down the road you can see, or to closest place that the other car may have emerged from. Also remember how many seconds it takes you to pull out to the point where the accident happened. We'll assume 1 city block for the distance, and 3 seconds for the time for you to emerge from the intersection for the sake of argument.
Next, bring up any of the map websites like google, yp.yahoo or mapquest, and find the intersection. Then measure the distance between the intersection and the point at which you could see. For the sake of this example assume it's 660 feet (220 yards, 1 city block).
Now, you can figure out the speed that the car must have been going for it to have been genuinely out of your line of sight at the time you chose to set off.
Here's the math:
660 feet divided by 3 seconds = 220 feet per second.
220 feet per second multiplied by 0.68 = 150mph.
This means that if you can see 660 feet, and it takes 3 seconds to pull out from the stop sign to the point of collision, then the car would have to be going 150mph for it to have been out of sight when you set off.
This math is for YOUR benefit only. It will not sway any judge or police officer (unless you can *prove* their speed first, then work backwards to a start point!) The point of this math is to give YOU an opportunity to see whether your argument stands up to the common sense test. If you try to argue that the other driver was averaging 150mph for that 220 yards after pulling out of a sidestreet then... Well, I'm sure you get the point.