I've got a situation that typically comes up a couple times a week where I need to turn left across two lanes of slow-moving traffic a couple blocks from my house. Legitimate breaks in the traffic at this time of day are rare, and when the traffic does back up to a standstill, I'm often still prevented from turning as people on the busier street are stopped in the middle of the intersection. As such, I'm almost entirely dependent on someone being 'nice' and letting me cut across infront of them.
In the example that the writer gives, he bizarrely absolves from blame the driver who cut across two lanes of traffic without having a clear line of sight of the second lane. That is clearly the guy who is most at fault and the guy who's actively endangering lives, especially his own. If there was a collision here, I would expect that the law would find that the driver who cut across traffic that he could not see is at fault, not the driver who stopped unnecessarily. Just because somebody stops to let you turn or merge doesn't mean that you're obligated to do so if you can't be sure that it's a safe decision. Make a judgement, and if it's not safe, wave the guy on.
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