The Intersection of Responsibilty and Common Sense

What Happens When You Wave Someone Through and They Get Into a Wreck?

Drivers don’t have a duty to provide information to other drivers or pedestrians. But when they do volunteer information, they have a responsibility to ensure the information is accurate. This issue usually comes up when one driver waives another through an intersection. When one driver waves another through an intersection and an accident happens, both drivers (the one blindly entering the intersection and the one who waived the driver into the intersection) are responsible.

An accident like this was featured in the Capitol Hill Seattle blog. The accident happened on 12th Ave near Pine. A public transit driver waived an SUV driver into traffic. The SUV driver hit the victim (Erin Dessert) who was riding a scooter. Ms. Dessert ended up in Harborview with serious injuries.

CHS recently posted a follow up on the story. It sounds like Ms. Dessert is making a great recovery from her injuries. But she is still going to have massive medical expenses and no matter how successful her recovery the injuries have and are going to impact her life.

Both the driver of the SUV and the public transit employee are legally responsible for the collision and Ms. Dessert’s damages. In order to pursue claims against the public transit authority (probably METRO) it’s going to be necessary to file a tort claim form. METRO has 60 days to respond to the tort claim form.

If Ms. Dessert was working at the time of the accident she is entitled to both workers compensation benefits and damages from the SUV driver and METRO.