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Court opinion:
Russell, driving a work van on a road with posted speed of 55 mi/h (90 km/h), approaches a green traffic light from the southwest. The light turns yellow, but Russell thinks he can get past it before it turns red, so he does not stop. Christopher, sitting in a work truck at the same intersection's northwest traffic light, sees the lights starting to change and decides to enter the intersection early, while he still has a red light. Russell attempts to swerve his van around Christopher's truck (without braking), but the van collides with the truck anyway (hard enough to spin the truck around by 180 degrees) and thence careens into Jasmine's car, which is in the process of stopping at the northeast traffic light. Three of Jasmine's limbs are broken in the crash. Accordingly, she sues Russell and Christopher for causing her injuries through negligence. The jury decides that (1) the injuries are worth 3.5 M$ and (2) Russell bears 60 percent of the fault (2.1 M$) and Christopher 40 percent (1.4 M$).
Russell argues that the jury's decision to assign more fault to him than to Christopher is unsupportable by the evidence presented at trial, since Christopher broke the law (by running the red light) and Russell did not (by attempting to get through the intersection on a yellow light). But the trial judge rejects this argument, and the appeals panel affirms. Under state law as distilled in the charge issued by the trial judge to the jury, a driver approaching a yellow light "is obligated to exercise reasonable care, which includes making reasonable observations for traffic traveling on an intersecting street".* Therefore, the jury was perfectly entitled to conclude that a non-negligent driver (1) would have stopped at the yellow light rather than trying to get through it or (2) would have tried to avoid hitting Christopher by braking rather than by swerving without braking.
*See also the following model jury charges, which unlike this case-specific charge have been approved by a statewide committee: general duty of motorist; duty of motorist to make observations; and duty of motorist proceeding past stop sign.
I wasn't aware there were states which didn't require the driver to stop at a yellow. Wisconsin does (and that is where I learned to drive), so as I read your story I was thinking "duh, of course he was more at fault, it's already illegal to enter the intersection when the light is yellow". One of the edge cases where road laws across states aren't quite the same, I guess.
I thought cruising throughout yellows was the norm and legal. I'm sure state laws have some point about doing safely and before it turns red.
See response here.
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