@patgurr created a hypothetical situation, and anything is possible. I’d prefer to be more patient and let the process take its course without admitting guilt at the time the accident occurred, even if I truly was at fault.
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I didn’t mean to step on any toes or impune anyone’s reputation, I was thinking along the lines of – if I blow through a stop sign, or am looking down while fiddling with my radio and run into the back of a line of cars stopped at a traffic light, or heading the wrong direction on an interstate exit ramp. Clearly I would be at fault and I would admit it. I didn’t mean to always take the blame no matter, or if it could be an accident where both parties are at fault. I tend to think in black and white situations and rarely get into the gray areas. I appreciate all the opposing opinions – I always learn much from those who oppose my opinions.
You are totally within your rights to do whatever clears your conscience concerning admitting fault. There are many including insurance companies who will take full advantage of you.
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I always get a police report no matter how small the damage, and have taught my kid to do the same.
In over 1/2 century of driving, I’ve been bumped in the rear three times. Only once was there proper driver licensure and insurance in place… and that was when I was rear-ended at a stop light by a young kid test driving a new Toyota MR2 (back when they went wedge-shaped). The front of his vehicle went under the rear of my vehicle, lifting the rear wheels off the ground. There was zero damage to my car, but the front end of the new car’s wedge looked like someone had stepped on it.
“She hit my car while when my car was parked” Sorry as English is my first language
Did not think
“I got hit in a parking lot at a shopping center, and was told police reports are not filed on incidents on private property, she was as honest as I and her insurance company covered the damages. She hit my car while parked.”
would confuse anybody
I worked at a trucking company that was in the process of going out of business and a bunch of us drivers were hanging around the break room for checks (they never came) and the dispatcher was throwing company records in the dumster.
Among these records were stacks of accident reports filled out by the drivers. To kill time we were reading these reports. In not a single report did the driver think he was at fault. Even the driver who wound up with his front wheels in the back seat of the car in front of him.
He reported " It was her fault, she was driving too close in front of me. "
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The one that gets me is when a driver pulls out from a stop sign and the approaching vehicle on his left, with the right-of-way, unable to stop or avoid him, plows into him. Then the person who pulled out from the stop sign claims it was the other driver’s fault because that driver was speeding. Duh!!! All the more reason not to pull out in front of the guy.
There are a couple of streets in MA that pulling out from a stop-sign is so dangerous. One is on Rt 9 near Shrewsbury. What’s so dangerous is the road you’re pulling out from is just over the crest of a hill. If someone is heading West on Rt 9 you won’t see them until they’re just reaching the top of the hill, and they’re usually doing 40+. That gives you less the 200’ of distance. I’ve personally witnessed 3 accidents over the years and I don’t drive in that area much…I’d love to see what the overall accident rate at that intersection is.
I was thinking the same thing.
Another thing to consider is that, at an angle where all you can see is the front of an oncoming vehicle, it is difficult to gauge its speed. It sure would be nice to be able to assume an oncoming driver isn’t speeding, but that is never a safe assumption to make.
This scenario, however, would be a clear case of questionable culpability, as both drivers would have contributed to factors that led to the collision. The speeding driver contributed to the likelihood of a collision by speeding, and the driver pulling out from the stop sign contributed to the likelihood of a collision by pulling out without being sure it was safe to do so. (When I say this, I’m not assigning blame, I’m just pointing out that either driver could have avoided the collision by mitigating risk factors. Mitigating risk factors is always important, even when you’re avoiding a collision that would be someone else’s fault.)
This is a case where state and local laws would be factors in determining culpability, so it would be dangerous to personally assign all of the blame to one of the drivers.
This would be a situation where a “black box” would be helpful.
Before pulling out from a stop sign in an area with traffic and you spot a car approaching the lane you want to travel in your mind must instantly do two calculations – how far away is the car and what is the speed of the car. If a long way off but traveling fast your mind tells you to wait. If the car is close but traveling very slowly your mind will tell you that you have time to pull out. The mind can do these calculations in one second. What a wonderful organ.
I had to hit the gas, thank goodness for good acceleration, a couple of blocks from a stoplight, As I was turning onto the road the light turns green and a motorcycle took off like a banshee, he was nearing my rear at a fast clip, I saw him coming in the rear view and not wanting a rear bumper motorcycle ornament hit the gas, he passed me on the left lane of the 4 lane road with the cars still a block behind, and gave me a dirty look, sorry I said in my mind, but not sure it was entirely my fault.
Well stated. But it’s far better than that.
I watched a PBS special recently about scientists developing programs to enable multiple drones to “talk to” one another as they flew, enabling them to act like a swarm of insects or a flock of birds. They’ve managed to get six drones to be able to “flock” so far, but found that the complexities multiply exponentially with each added drone, requiring algorithms of immense complexity.
As we’re driving and interacting with everything around us including traffic and pedestrians, we continually process far more data than the magnitude necessary for the drones to interact. And we do much of it based on prior learning and “mindlessly”. We learn to predict the behavior of others, and we learn to predict the effects of physics (with experience we know intuitively that a car coming down an on ramp into our lane is going too fast to merge safely, so we take actions to prevent an accident). We do this countless times every single time we drive. We anticipate. It’s how we stay alive on the roads.
I remember reading once a statement that “the brain is so complex and capable that the only thing it will never be able to fully understand is itself”. I believe that.
Not that complex as you might think.
https://www.recode.net/2016/11/16/13658038/disney-300-drones-intel
Their doing the same thing with land based autonomous “robots”. I read some articles a few years back about how they wanted them to mimic a wolf pack in how they sought out and attacked their “prey”. Starting to look like Terminator was all that far fetched…
Dave: “Please call off those robotic wolves circling me, PAL!”
PAL (pack leader): “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Dave.”
CSA 
Unfortunately I witness many drivers who appear incapable of calculating distance, speed, and time.
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To be fair, it’s a lot easier to judge the speed of a vehicle when you’re viewing the vehicle at a right angle to its path than it is when you’re facing the front of a vehicle. The human mind is capable of a lot of things, but judging the speed of a vehicle is a lot harder to do in some relative positions than others. When you’re facing the front of a vehicle, what you have to go on visually is the change of the vehicle’s size in your perspective, and if you’re lucky enough to have a good view, the lack of change in perspective of other objects in comparison.
You can also observe the road between you and the approaching car began to shorten. Sometimes quickly and sometimes slowly.
Yes, the road would be one of those “other objects in comparison” that I mentioned, and if you happen to be sitting high enough to see the road, it makes for a good reference.