This driver’s careless u-turn from the far right lane was so bad it looked an awful lot like an insurance scam.
SoCal resident and Redditor /u/Marie7787 shared headshaking dashcam footage from earlier last week (Nov 18, 2024) from downtown Burbank showing a careless driver making an insane u-turn from the far right lane, almost colliding with /u/Marie7787.
It was so bad and suspect, /u/Marie7787 thought it was an insurance scam.
Check out her dashcam footage below.
[OC] Can’t decide if this was an insurance scam or just an idiot
byu/marie7787 inIdiotsInCars
The incident happened on N Hollywood Way just after the intersection with Victory Blvd (exact location on Google Maps linked here.)
As the dashcam footage shows, OP waits for her light to turn green and proceeds across the intersection.
In the distance, we can see the brake lights of our offending driver trigger on, signaling they’ve shifted out of park and into drive.
Since they’re in the far right lane, it’s logical to assume they’d, at the very least, not pull something crazy like a U-turn in front of oncoming traffic.
That’s not the case.
The driver, in what looks like a blue Nissan Versa Note, signals and immediately pulls a U-turn into OP’s direction of travel.
OP swerves out of the way into oncoming traffic, narrowly avoiding a collision.
Thankfully, this happened in the middle of the night (around midnight) and there was no oncoming traffic OP could’ve swerved into.
Everyone makes it out unscathed, although the maneuver was so bad and “sus” that OP thought it was an insurance scam.
“You can see the car waiting in the corner and starting to move when my light turns green.”
This driver’s move violated California VC 8.2.22103 which states that,
“… turning movement shall be made as close as practicable to the extreme left-hand edge of the lanes moving in the driver’s direction of travel immediately prior to the initiation of the turning movement when more than one lane in the direction of travel is present.”
Drivers who violate the above are subject to a base fine of $234 and one point on their driving record.
Almost everyone agreed in the comments that, although this was one wild move, it was probably not a scammer.
“Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence,” /u/Rbkelley1 commented in reply to OP’s title.
“I can’t imagine someone intentionally turning the car so that their door is the point of impact – real life idiot in the wild here IMO,” /u/NHGuy commented.
“Nice quick reflexes OP, so lucky there were no cars in the oncoming lane,” /u/kchoyin complimented OP.
As drivers, we can never assume, we always have to confirm.
When it comes to harebrained maneuvers like this one, looking with your mirrors and eyes is mandatory.
And this is also why it’s important to stay on your toes, because of drivers like that one.
