What happens when a stubborn driver who refuses to yield meets another driver who refuses to relinquish his right of way?
Baltimore County-area driver and Redditor /u/DiamondThrowAway82 shared headshaking dashcam footage from near this busy Parkville intersection to the /r/IdiotsInCars subreddit showing a driver in a Subaru refusing to yield, despite their lane ending, and the driver next to them unwilling to acquiesce.
Check out the dashcam footage showing the battle of the egos embedded below with the original Reddit thread linked here.
The incident happened near the intersection of Harford Rd. and Joppa Rd. (Exact location on Google Maps linked here.)
As the dashcam shows, OP is headed northbound up Harford Rd.
After that intersection, drivers in the right lane of Harford Rd. have 500 feet to join the left lane, the lane with the right-of-way.
That means drivers in the right lane must properly yield to cars in the left lane.
This driver in a silver Subaru Crosstrek clearly did not get the message: despite plenty of space to slip between OP and the Saturn Vue in front of him, the Crosstrek driver tries to brute-force his way in front of the Vue.
The Vue driver, in their paid off SUV, is not in the mood and is clearly ready enough to wreck his Saturn, too, because, despite the Crosstrek’s best attempts to cut him off, the Vue driver refuses to budge.
To the Crosstrek’s credit, it has space to change lanes in front of the Vue at one point, but the Vue driver accelerates.
“While the right car could have easily merged behind, they were also completely past the left car when the left car sped up/closed the distance to instigate the actual collision. I’m gonna say the right car was passive-aggressive while the left car was aggressive-aggressive here.” /u/SurfMaster pointed out.
They end up nearly side-swiping each other until the Crosstrek driver is forced to slot behind the Vue, like the rules of the road intended they do from the beginning.
“We really need to add a psych test as a requirement when getting a license,” the top comment from /u/xMorningGlow reads.
“Holy cow. This is my grocery store! I despise people who get in the rightmost lane that don’t plan to turn into the shopping center before their lane ends,” local /u/WVPrepper shared.
In Maryland, failing to yield when a lane ends is typically charged as a right-of-way violation, carrying about a $140 fine and 1 point on your license. If a driver intentionally blocks someone from merging (instead of allowing a safe zipper merge), it can be cited as aggressive driving or failure to exercise due care, which can bring higher fines and up to 5 points depending on how it’s charged. If it leads to a crash, penalties and liability go up fast.
