Despite having an obstructed view, drivers still have the duty of care to make sure it’s 100 percent safe to enter a street before doing so.
Austin driver and Redditor /u/Castle_Douglas shared headshaking dashcam footage showing a driver entering a road as he approached less than 20 feet away, narrowly avoiding what would’ve been one massive T-bone collision, but getting clipped regardless.
Check out the incident from their dashcam below with the original Reddit thread linked here.
The incident happened in the 12000 block of Renfert Way in front of Solis Mammography (Exact location on Google Maps linked here.)
As the dashcam shows, OP is driving down a particularly packed Renfert Way.
With drivers parked on either side of the street, it’s a high-traffic area.
As such, there are signs warning drivers not to park too close to the driveway, as it obstructs the view of drivers exiting.
Here’s what the exact sign is near where OP approached the soon-to-be offending driver.
And here are two vehicles directly past that sign, in violation and subject to tow.
We can see a driver in a white Toyota RAV-4 creeping out onto Renfert Way and, instead of yielding to a fast approaching OP, they pull out into OP’s direction of travel.
OP does his best to swerve out of the way, but it’s too little too late; it appears that the RAV-4 just barely makes contact with OP’s side fender.
Regardless, his efforts are commendable as, if he hadn’t been 100% paying attention, he would’ve t-boned the driver smack dab directly into their driver’s side door area…hard.
As OP’s title says, the driver dared to blame OP for being in their blind spot.
“Blind spot? Totally irrelevant. She has a duty to be sure that she can enter an active roadway safely. Clearly, she failed to do so,” the top comment from /u/insuranceguynyc reads.
“She is blind, therefore everything is in her blind spot,” /u/Citiesmadeofa**es humoursly added.
“4Runner shouldn’t be allowed to park that close as well. I have that situation in several higher-speed crossing streets I go through. You can inch all you want, but you’ll never know until you enter the road,” /u/kunta-kinte pointed out.
In Austin (and all of Texas), entering a roadway and colliding with another vehicle because you didn’t look properly is generally cited as failure to yield the right-of-way, with fines typically $500–$2,000 for collisions causing injury. Texas no longer uses a points system; consequences focus on convictions, fines, and possible license action. (Texas Transportation Code §542.4045)
