A car turned left across my path and totaled my car into another one — where does New York put the duty?

Attorney Answer

New York puts the yielding duty on the driver who turns left across oncoming traffic, which is the strongest fact in your description. But before this page can tell you what any share of fault would mean for you, one thing your message does not state has to be settled: whether anyone was hurt.

That is not a technicality. A claim about a wrecked car and a claim about an injured person are governed by different rules in New York, with different requirements and different consequences for a driver who is found to share part of the blame. Your message describes the car and nothing else, so no one reading it can classify the claim, and this page will not guess at it. Getting that settled — and only then applying any rule about shared fault — is the first thing to raise with a New York attorney.

The duty itself is statutory and it is not evenly split. Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1141 places the obligation to yield on the turning driver: a driver intending to turn left, whether within an intersection or into a driveway or private road, must give way to a vehicle coming from the opposite direction that is already in the intersection or close enough to be an immediate hazard. Driving straight through on a road you are entitled to be on is not, by itself, a breach of anything. "I didn't see you" is an explanation of how the collision happened, not a defense to it — a turning driver is expected to look.

That does not make the outcome automatic. The facts most often argued about in a left-turn collision are speed, the color of a light if there was one, and whether the through driver had any real opportunity to avoid the collision. Those are evidence questions, decided on the police report, the damage patterns, any footage and the witnesses.

The third vehicle is worth thinking about separately. Being pushed into another car is not the same as driving into it, and the owner of that third vehicle will still look first at whoever is insured and available. Expect a claim or a letter, do not answer it with an admission, and give it to your own insurer. How responsibility is sorted out when one vehicle is propelled into another comes from decided cases rather than from a statute, so it is described here in general terms.

What you can do

1. Get the police accident report, and check that the third vehicle, its owner and its insurer are listed on it.

2. Photograph the damage to all three vehicles if you can, and note where on each the contact occurred — the contact points show the geometry of the turn.

3. Photograph the location: the intersection or driveway, the sight lines, the markings and any obstruction to the turning driver's view.

4. Identify witnesses and any nearby camera in the first days, while footage still exists.

5. Report the collision to your own insurer, including the contact with the third vehicle, and forward anything you receive from its owner rather than answering it yourself.

6. If anyone in any of the vehicles felt anything at all, get examined promptly and have the visit tied to the date of the collision in the record.

7. Take it all to a New York attorney and ask them to classify the claim before any rule about shared fault is applied to you.

⏱ Time limits apply. If the claim is one for personal injury, CPLR 214(5) allows three years for "an action to recover damages for a personal injury except as provided in sections 214-b, 214-c, 214-i and 215". If it is a claim for the vehicle, CPLR 214(4) allows three years for "an action to recover damages for an injury to property except as provided in section 214-c". Both run from the date of the collision, and much shorter deadlines apply where a public corporation or its vehicle is involved. Which applies to you depends on facts this page does not have, so have a New York attorney review the dates on your own facts — this page does not calculate them.