North Carolina and South Carolina Personal Injury Lawyer Blog
When turning left:
Treat this,
Like this:
If you are turning left, the signal light on the left is really the same as the sign on the right. I know that seems like an obvious statement. Most people don’t need a lawyer’s advice for Driver’s Education 101, but I thought this was worth talking about. In my work as a motor vehicle injury lawyer, I see more injuries from this mistake than I do from running red lights or missing stop signs.
I often talk to people who are injured because a driver turning left on a green light did not yield the right of way to oncoming traffic. The injured driver will say, “They just turned right in front of me and there was nothing I could do.” Or sometimes the passenger will say, “There was a car coming but my driver just turned right in front of it, and it was too late.” If the turning driver has a passenger, that person is in an especially bad position because the oncoming car will hit their side in a T-bone type crash. The bad driver always says, “But I had a GREEEEEEEENNN light!” The problem is the oncoming car also had a GREEEEEEEENNN light and they were going straight.