Words for My Enjoyment

Backed Into Parked Car, Who’s At Fault?

May 16th, 2007

Day 3 of WFME’s Week ‘o Searches welcomes you back.

This week WFME’s been taking search strings that have brought people to the site (which apparently has been responsible 56% of the time in finding this blog a new slew of readers) and answering the questions that the initially-faceless citizens of the Net have desperately wanted the answers to. Today? The classic “backed into parked car, who’s at fault” query people keep searching for.

Today’s post is for all you horrible drivers who wish you had a scapegoat available when you hit (yet another) car.

There’s two types of automobile drivers. There’s the kind who did extremely well on their driver’s exam (I got 99 out of 100) and who are defensive drivers — their heads are always pivoting, they’re always signaling, they let people into traffic like good driving samaritans. This first type of driver is courteous, coherent and cranially-enhanced. They stop at stop signs, they obey the laws of traffic and they hardly ever get pulled over for any offenses whatsoever.

Then there’s the car drivers who have to ask, “If I backed into a parked car, who’s at fault?”

The people who ask these questions are the “bad drivers.” The people who get a dent in their car, don’t fix it, and then drive around town looking all hoop-d — giving all “good drivers” the good sense to stay away (since they’re probably going to be slamming into a parked car very near in the future). The drivers who ask the above question also like to ask these wonderfully astute questions as well:

• If I slam into a bus of school children, do I get to sue?
• Isn’t speeding the fault of the other drivers, making me drive with the flow of traffic?
• If my car hydroplanes and slams into a building, who can I blame about the ice?
• If I sped through a red light and the camera took a picture of me, isn’t that against my First Amendment rights?

The drivers who like to ask if “backing into a parked car” is their fault, are the same drivers who failed the written exam at their local DMV, once got into a car accident with a concrete median, backed out of their garage with the door still closed, swerved into another car to avoid what eventually ended up being “the sky”, got pulled over for their car “littering used toilet paper” and rammed into a car of people in front of them on the freeway “to avoid getting hit from a tailgater behind.”

Translation? They suck at driving.

But of course, how could this blog today be all critical? Isn’t this about answering the question posed in the search string? Shouldn’t WFME be doing these hapless automobile searchers a favor by enlightening them on the subject? Yes, yes, yes, yes AND yes.

So here it is:

If you backed into a car. That was parked. In which no one was currently sitting. And they were parked. In a spot. In a parking lot. Between the lines. And you. Were driving your car. As badly as you often do. And you hit the parked car. Because you weren’t looking. Or weren’t aware. Or weren’t smart.

IT’S YOUR FAULT.

It’s not the fault of the phantom driver who happens to be in the Supermarket right this very minute buying a vat of potato salad. It’s not the fault of the person who owns that car, who happens to be getting their dry cleaning while you’re eating a burrito, drinking a Diet Coke, texting on your Blackberry and slamming into parked cars. And it’s definitely not the fault of the driver who is asleep. At home. When you decided to back up into their parked car…in their driveway.

YOUR FAULT.

Hope that helps.

Posted under Accidents, Automobiles, Bad Drivers, Fault, WFME's Week 'o Searches. |