Merging is one of the riskier parts of driving. There are various strategies that will help drivers merge safely on the highway, but they won’t always be able to successfully account for the behavior of other drivers. One driver is approaching another at an angle. When merging accidents do occur, figuring out who was at fault can also sometimes be relatively challenging. There are different factors that can influence the legal outcome of a case involving a merging accident.
Speeding
If one of the drivers involved in the accident was speeding, that driver was probably at fault. However, the driver who was on the highway already might have been failing to follow other traffic laws. If either driver was operating the vehicle aggressively or in a distracted manner, either driver will take the blame. The car accident lawyers working on the case will try to account for all of these factors and more.
Failure to Yield
The merging driver may not be held responsible for the accident if another driver more or less got in the way of the driver who was trying to merge in the first place. Those sorts of accidents often happen before the merging drivers even reach the highway, or the accidents end up blocking the merging lane. Experienced car accident lawyers might be handling several different merging accidents in a situation like that.
Lane Hopping
However, merging accidents can become more complicated if the merging drivers go from the inner lane to the center road lane, because those drivers might collide with motorists who were shifting from the outer road lanes and into the center themselves. The legal consequences of those situations can vary, but the merging drivers won’t necessarily be held responsible in those cases. While merging drivers have to yield to the drivers who are already on the highway, car accident lawyers won’t always find that the merging driver was at fault in accidents that involve merging.
Drivers who merge very carefully and who avoid moving too suddenly can successfully prevent some merging accidents. However, merging is a delicate process, particularly on some highways. Merging accidents can have multiple causes.