Church Parking Lot auto accident?
there is a 4 way intersection inside my church parking lot there are no Stop signs and the only things are crosswalk looking thing with narrow yellow paint, painted in diagonal on all 4 side at where the intersection meets.
i came to a complete stop and as i stepped on the gas to go forward, a car hit my divers side. i did not see the car at all and it literally came out of nowhere. my car is a mini van and the other persons car was a corvette with two passengers, and mine a ford winstar with 6 passenger ( all including the driver) . the Corvette hit my drivers side wheel and my car was pushed to the right about 2 feet.
the wheel is at a angle about 70degrees?
a police report was made. i called my insur comp and they said that because i have liability ( not full coverage) they cannot do anything and that i have to call the Corvette’s insur and handle everything myself..
who determines who is at fault? i need a car because the van is currently un-drivable. what should i do? do i need a lawyer?
please advise
thank you
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6 Responses to “Church Parking Lot auto accident?”
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GET A LAWYER.
Common law suggest driver on the right has right of way but I have not seen that carved in stone anywhere.
You should try very hard to work this out with the other driver. It’s NEVER a good solution to take another church member into court.
However, you may ultimately end up in court after all since the insurance company of the other driver will almost certainly contest a claim against them.
If everything is as you described, the Corvette driver is at fault. The rules of the road (and your state’s drivers license manual along with state laws) say that at unmarked intersections, both vehicles come to a complete stop. The vehicle who arrived first, gets the right of way. However, if there is a doubt, the driver to the right has the right of way. There’s another law that states “Even if you have the legal right of way, you cannot enter the intersection unless it is safe to do so.”
Since this happened on private property, you may be in for a fight. If his insurance fails to cooperate, and if the damage is less than your states small claims limit, sue the driver and let him deal with his own insurance company.
There’s an unwritten right of way law: The bigger vehicle gets the right of way. The faster vehicle takes the right of way.
“right of way” can never be taken — only yielded.
You said ” it literally came out of nowhere.” Cars don’t come out of nowhere. It came out of somewhere, you just didn’t see it coming.
You assumed that having stopped, you could just proceed without looking to be sure there were no cars coming that might not stop.
But none of that really matters — your car was there, the corvette ran into it. It’s the other guy’s fault.
If their insurance won’t play ball, get yourself a lawyer. The location is irrelevant.
get a lawyer at once
The insurance adjuster does an investigation and determines fault.
The adjuster will need to speak to both drivers, inspect both vehicles, probably get photos of the intersection where this happened, get a copy of the police report and speak to any witnesses.
The adjuster than applies the laws of your state (the state where the accident happened) in determining whose fault the accident is.
There is no where near enough information provided for anyone here to tell you whose fault this accident is.