Debt issue sometimes complex
The question of fault in a collision sometimes becomes a lot more complex if one of the parties involved was distracted by, for example, a telephone. More and more often, the blame in such a case is placed (partly or partially) on that person.
Suppose you are driving on a major road and looking at your phone. Then someone comes from a side road who does not give you the right of way and you collide with them. Normally that person would be at fault and not you, but because you were looking at your phone, at least part of the blame could still be yours. In any case, the latter is increasingly the outcome of lawsuits, an expert from DAS emphasizes.
Even though you had the right of way, you may have been able to avoid the collision if you had not been distracted and had paid your full attention to the traffic. For this reason, judges are increasingly finding that the blame may also partly lie with the distracted party. “We see that judges are increasingly taking this into account. If this dangerous driving behavior is proven by convincing evidence, judges are increasingly inclined to reverse the burden of proof,” says Rembrandt Groenewegen of DAS. “This also applies when looking in a mirror to put on your lips or if you as a driver are focused on meeting documents or car documents and are therefore not focused on the traffic and the road.” However, this is often difficult to prove, Groenewegen emphasizes.
What do you think, is someone who had the right of way but was distracted also partly to blame for a possible collision? Let me know in the comments.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl