My fully intact long-term memory remembers a cliché from my driver’s ed youth: Half of all collisions occur three or fewer blocks aware from one of the motorist’s homes. This is not because the familiarity induces one motorist to pay less attention. It’s mostly because the “local” and “collector” streets most residents’ homes are on are full to turns to get to a main road. For many reasons – visibility, impatience, etc. – turns are harder. But for vehicles with long wheelbases – like buses and trucks – the turns are harder (see https://transalt.com/article/dancing-in-the-oncoming-lane-long-wheelbases-and-right-turns/ and https://transalt.com/article/the-danger-deterrent-long-wheelbases-and-left-turns/). Poor traffic engineering (common to small towns) contributes to the problem.
Right turns tend to pose different problems for large vehicles than do left turns. A large vehicle turning right cannot turn into the right lane around the corner – the bus must spend some time “dancing” in the left lane. It just can’t turn sharply enough to immediately end up in the right lane just around the corner. With left turns – with far more room to make the turn, and most buses with schedules too tight – drivers tend to make medium-speed “rolling left turns” instead of first coming to a stop (a regulation in states like Kentucky) or a crawl – often shaving a minute or two from the route’s running time instead of waiting for oncoming vehicles going straight to first pass, and then wait for a gap in oncoming traffic of an amber traffic signal.
Another problem – particularly with large vehicles making right turns – is the inexcusable (and stupid) practice of placing limit lines, at signalized intersections, too close to the intersection. With no signature, traffic engineers have no choice: Vehicles must pull up to the edge of the intersection to observe vehicle approaching from both sides. But on signalized intersections – on which most buses and trucks are usually allowed to travel, if the vehicles on side streets pull up too close to the intersection – for which there is no need, since a traffic signal controls the movement of vehicles in all directions – when the limit lines are right up against the intersecting roadway, a bus or truck not making a “square turn” (if space even allows for it) is likely to chop off the left-front corner of the vehicle awaiting the turn. An attorney and his or her expert should obviously not comment that, “Hey, this is not Norway or Japan,” lest he or she alienate the jury. But this is an important thing to know. This is America, where incompetence runs wild, and not caring about other people is the culture of half of our voters. So a savvy lawyer and his or her expert need to look for all kinds of mistakes in traffic engineering, not just errors and omissions made by bus drivers and their company’s management officials.
Many basic rules of the road for turning are well known: Let oncoming vehicles come straight through rather than turn in front of them. But while a common motorist may be in a hurry, his or her schedule is not so often too tight. And buses (more, I believe, than trucks) shave time from their route by cutting in front of oncoming vehicles.
These few errors and omissions account for, and help to explain, a lot of turning accidents. When working a turning accident, attorneys on both sides should be aware of such things and determine (ideally with a reconstructionist) what factors led to the incident.
A handful of errors and omissions account for a large number of turning incidents. An attorney is well advised to be aware of them and examine such incidents from these multiple angles.
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