OHTA.ca

Hi Everyone,

I'm looking for some advice on how to approach this. I was in a collision last Monday which I will try to illustrate below.

Basically the scenario is that I was coming out of a parking lot, and there was a red light on the right side of the image below, and I was turning away from the light. There was a lineup of cars starting at the gray Box. The red car saw me waiting to come out of the parking lot, stopped and waved me ahead. Now as I show with the yellow dotted lined, right where the guy stopped, the lane starts dividing for a left turn lane at the up ahead traffic light.

I come out slowly, and look for traffic from the left, as I turn back and start to go out after seeing it was clear, the blue car shown below swing around the red car stopped to let me by to go into the left turn lane (which had not started yet) and hits me in the front bumper, the aftermath of the collision can be seen in the other image below. It shows that car that hit me in the wrong lane.

Now I understand since I am coming out of a parking lot I am automatically at fault even though he is in the wrong lane, and breaking the speed limit by 10km (its even in the police report). So I guess my question is do I have a case as to how I don't feel I was being unsafe. I do have the right to do what I was doing as long as it was in safety, and I don't see how I can react to someone who whips around a stopped car into the wrong lane going 60km/hr in a 50.

I am the gold Honda in the picture below.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, I have until the 19th to respond to this ticket.

Thanks

Kind of an odd section to be charged under. I'm trying to remember if that section applies when you're leaving a private drive. You probably should have been charged under section 139(1), fail to yield from private drive.

Stanton wrote:Kind of an odd section to be charged under. I'm trying to remember if that section applies when you're leaving a private drive. You probably should have been charged under section 139(1), fail to yield from private drive.

Thanks for the reply, I was actually coming out of a public parking lot for a small strip of restaurants etc (my drawing makes it look smaller than it was).

The size of the road isn't really relevant, just the fact that it was private property. Section 142(1) covers turning off a roadway into a private drive, but not vice versa. I'm just wondering if where you turned could count as an intersection, otherwise the charge is incorrect.

From the photo it looks like the Acura had to cross the solid yellow line. Wouldn't he be at fault for failing to drive in a marked lane?

syntst wrote:From the photo it looks like the Acura had to cross the solid yellow line. Wouldn't he be at fault for failing to drive in a marked lane?

That's what I thought was the case, but apparently it doesn't matter what he was doing (speeding, wrong lane) because I was coming out of a parking lot. This is why I feel like I was not being unsafe as I can't predict someone is going to do that.

Basically I want to know if no matter what they will rule against me if I take this to court, because of that rule.

Honestly I don't feel like I was being unsafe and I feel losing demerit points for this is completely unfair, but I guess there's a difference between fairness, and law.