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Fairfax Underground
Welcome to Fairfax Underground, a project site designed to improve communication among residents of Fairfax County, VA. Feel free to post anything Northern Virginia residents would find interesting.
I was involved in an accident in VA.
Insurance company and police, upon arrival on the scene, decided that it was my fault.
I was issued a ticket for "unsafe lane change", and my court date is in few weeks.
What are my options?
Cops were not there obviously when it occured, but from my statements and from other drivers statement = result is a ticket to me.
Which insurance company is saying it is your fault? Your insurance company, or the other person's? Seems to me your insurance company would be inclined to fight it.
TheMeeper Wrote:
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> I can't answer your question but I am sorta
> curious- what specifically did you do that police
> felt warranted an "unsafe lane change" violation?
I think the fact the guy made a lane change and it resulted in an accident is probably all the cops needed. Anything worse and I think they would have gone with wreckless driving.
Here we go again. Another bad driver getting charged for a mistake and looking for some loophole in the system to get off. This board needs its own forum just for the bad drivers to share the sob stories and urban legends for how to get off of tickets.
I would tend to believe that you did in fact change lanes improperly causing the accident or you would have either a) not been charged at all, or b) been charged with something other than this. That particular charge requires the fault to be yours, so there must be some indication of that.
Having a spotless record for years, this was my first accident.
I was merging from a ramp and came in too slow and hit a guy.
Older car, didnt have enough pickup to merge fast enough.
Because of the demage and age of the car, it was declared a total loss.
Did you have your signal on? I do not understand why this would be illegal. I suppose you should have waited until there were no cars in that far right lane, correct?
KV, I would like to give you serious advice. Please establish a real account and private message me, and I will give you tips you may find helpful. I just won't dive in with the dreck any further on this thread, I have plenty of other threads to be dreck on.
RESton Peace Wrote:
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> thus the reason I told the person establish an
> account int he first sentence.
doh!
"the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish."
This is simple. It is the guy's fault. He was merging from a ramp and hit someone. It's called "yield." He was obligated to yield until there was a sufficient opportunity to get on the road. It's his fault. He deserved the ticket. Done.
RESton Peace Wrote:
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> thus the reason I told the person establish an
> account int he first sentence.
>
> Reading the WHOLE sentence is important. I don't
> know what they tell you in that remedial reading
> class you take.
>
> j/k
I would never have expected to see these words under your headline lol
But unsafe lane change can mean you didn't have full control of the lane you were merging into, or it wasn't clear to make the change. For example if you change into a lane where a car is either in your blind spot or is clearly going fast enough to get cut off by your lane change.
If it was only a yiled issue then the ticket would have been "failure to yield right of way".