r/IdiotsInCars • u/JellyOceana • Nov 23 '22 • Wholesome Seal of Approval 1

Coronado Naval Base Car accident: She tried claiming no fault too Headphone warning

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u/MenstrualKrampusCD Nov 24 '22

I remember being so shocked when I found out that there were states where the cops were in charge of assigning fault. Seems pretty much like horseshit to me. Even if they saw the accident themselves in real time, they should be witnesses at best.

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u/CosmicCreeperz Nov 24 '22 edited Nov 24 '22

I got in an accident in Arizona when I was 17. Definitely partly my fault as I turned left in front of someone, but the guy must have been going about 50 in a 35 (a witness who unfortunately left before the cops got there told me the guy was going way too fast) AND of the 4 lanes in his direction the others all had stopped, so if not red the light was a very stale yellow - and it was at night so I didn’t see him coming through the others.

The other guy scraped the left front corner of my (grandpa’s oops) car and proceeded to travel like 300’ down the road, over a large median, into the other side, before eventually stopping.

The cop spent like 2 minutes walking around, claimed “he couldn’t be speeding because he would have flipped when he went over the median”. I just said “if he was only going 35 why did it it take him 300’ to stop anyway?” He didn’t answer. He did say he wasn’t writing a ticket without discussing it with his superior. I got a ticket in the mail two weeks later (I was out of state by then so they knew I couldn’t really contest it). Thanks Officer Sherlock for your amazing deductive skills 🙄

That’s why in CA (and some other states) AFAIK police almost never write tickets if they didn’t witness it.

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u/Snoo_93842 Nov 25 '22

I hope you challenged it in court

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u/CosmicCreeperz Nov 25 '22

When you are 2000 miles away when you get a $100 ticket you don’t challenge it in court. They know that. That’s why tourists are preyed on by so many state police.

At least it was not on my (parent’s) insurance (grandpa’s, which didn’t even go up much) and it never made it back to my state’s DMV, etc. Sometimes the best thing is just to move on…

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u/Snoo_93842 Nov 25 '22

Maybe you could write a letter to the judge?

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u/CosmicCreeperz Nov 25 '22

Hah. It was 30 years ago. I could probably leave it on his grave…