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Hi,

My wife was parallel parked at night and went to complete a U-turn as she believe the road was clear, looking in her side mirror and also turning behind her to check. She saw some headlights but made the assessment that the car was along way away. When she was straightening up, the car was obviously going faster than she expected and clipped the back right hand corner of her car, spinning her around 360 degrees and stopping in the middle of the road. Witnesses who were parked behind my wife when she started the u-turn said the car was going faster than 50km/hr and didn't brake [no skid marks evident next day] or try to avoid by steering around my wife when there was room to do so. My reading of the road code says you can perform the u-turn if the road is clear to do so, but in this case the accident proves it was not. How does the potential speeding or non-attention to hazards in front of the road effect the liability in this situation?

Thanks,
J

Your wife crossed the flow of traffic to carry out a U-turn when it wasn't clear to do so and went into the path of an oncoming car - it would seem that she is at fault. I doubt any court would find that she is not at fault and that the other driver caused the accident due to non-attention or speculation that they were driving in excess of the sign posted speed limit.

In the evening driver's also rely on vehicle lights to recognise a vehicle and it's likely the other driver wouldn't have seen lights facing them as the side of the vehicle would've been towards the traffic.

Thanks for your quick response.

Incident was actually at 5:30pm so it was still reasonably light at that time, but dark when I got there 30mins later, but i guess that doesn't change anything with regard to flow of traffic. cheers again.