A dashcam owner in Tampa, FL got an insurance headache and a couple of misaligned discs after this careless driver made an illegal u-turn from the wrong lane.
Floridian and Redditor /u/Financial_Opinion_31 shared head-shaking dashcam footage to the /r/IdiotsInCars subreddit from earlier this Sept (Sept 9, 2024) from Tampa showing him t-boning a driver making an illegal u-turn from the wrong lane.
Check out the dashcam footage for yourself below.
Who is at fault? [OC]
byu/Financial_Opinion_31 inIdiotsInCars
The incident happened in the 6700 block of N Armenia Ave (Exact location on Google Maps linked here.)
As OP’s dashcam footage shows, he’s driving around the speed limit in the left lane on N Armenia Ave.
The speed limit here is 40 MPH.
Up ahead, we can see a driver in a blue Kia sedan slow (brake lights visible,) signal left, and flip an (illegal) u-turn headed the opposite way.
OP stomps on his brakes and swerves out of the way but, unfortunately, doesn’t have enough time or space to scrub enough speed to stop in time.
He ends up t-boning the driver in the Kia on her front driver’s door.
While most Redditors agree that the majority fault lies with the driver in the Kia, many also blame OP for not paying attention, which he maintains he was.
“The car that made the illegal turn from a right lane is at fault but come on dude, that collision was easily avoidable on your part,” /u/mtn-cat replied.
“I’d say the fault is not on you but you really could have done so much to avoid this… doesn’t even seem like you hit the brakes AT ALL until you were already crashed into the side of them,” /u/Saucetheb0ss added.
“I was paying attention. I expected her to merge into my lane or turn right, but I never expected her to make a U-turn while cutting me off and giving me almost no better option. I pressed my brakes as hard as I could, but the speed on the dashcam has some delay,” OP replied defending himself.
Despite only being a week since the incident, OP says the other party’s insurance is already making payments to his attorney for medical expenses accrued.
“…I have an attorney and I’m already getting paid by her insurance for my medical expenses…Apparently it (the crash) was hard enough to misalign some discs on my column I got an MRI done and this was what my doctor told me so now I’m going to therapy 3 times a week.”
In my opinion, while OP could’ve been driving a bit slower and reacted quicker, his reaction isn’t that out of the ordinary and seems par for the course given the circumstances.
From the time the other driver braked and began his turn, there were all of two whole seconds.
The average driver’s reaction time is 1.5 seconds.
OP also mistakenly gave the benefit of the doubt to the other driver that they would do anything but an illegal U-turn from the right lane.
“I expected her to do anything but to hit a u-turn from the right lane.”
Thankfully, it sounds like everyone got out of this accident without major injury.
Unfortunately, a part of defensive driving today is expecting other drivers to do the wildest thing possible, and to prepare for it accordingly.
