Accidents Are Not All that Happens When Run a Red Light

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has identified running a red light as a contributing driver action in crash data. So for those planning a road trip through towns and cities, you must be prepared to follow traffic signals with caution as you will find many traffic lights. A driver (and passengers) must know there are significant consequences for running the red light. Even if it was unintentional, drivers may still face traffic citations, insurance consequences, property damage claims, or liability for injuries.

Railroad crossings with signals and gates follow the same principle. In fact, trains are significantly safer than car crashes. But ignoring the warnings adds the danger of collisions.

Let’s examine the possible consequences and what you should do next.

Intent Doesn’t Change the Legal Analysis Much

Some people might think that the importance of accidental crime from a legal perspective is less significant than that of a planned crime.

In civil litigation, however, this is not usually the case. The concept of negligence does not imply an intentional offense but rather a failure to take the degree of care that a typical driver would have taken in similar conditions.

A driver failing to stop at a red light due to distraction, poor judgment, or misunderstanding the signal is considered a violation of that standard of care irrespective of intentions.

A driver who has “accidentally” run a red light may still be held responsible for the accident in civil court despite the absence of criminal intent. The citation and civil liability for the accident are different issues.

What Actually Happens Immediately After

Post-accident activities have a critical influence on the case. It is important to inform the authorities and to get an accident report. This will serve as an early record of the scene and the parties’ accounts.

Providing the insurance information and taking pictures of the accident scene, traffic light, and skid marks, as well as locating witnesses capable of confirming the signal timing, become important when dealing with a red-light accident because liability will be decided based on the traffic light.

Why These Cases Often Become Evidence Disputes

It could be difficult to determine who is at fault when both drivers claim that the other person ran the red light. These are cases when traffic camera footage can be helpful. With these tools, it is possible to see the timing of the signals and how the vehicles entered the intersection.

Other useful evidence may include witness statements, the position of the vehicles, the type and location of damage, and data from the vehicle’s event recorder.

Car accident lawyer George A. Gallegos investigating this kind of crash typically moves quickly to secure whatever camera footage might exist, since municipal traffic cameras and nearby business security systems often overwrite their recordings on a short cycle, sometimes within days.

Comparative Fault Can Still Apply

Even in such cases where one driver definitely violated the red light, comparative negligence would help lessen the liability of the negligent driver if in any way the other party had been careless enough to contribute to the accident by driving over the legal speed limit with the green light.

Most states apply comparative negligence, which reduces an injured party’s damages by that party’s own percentage of fault. This makes it important that the details of the accident be considered during negotiations regarding compensation.

Red-Light Violations Aren’t Limited to Traffic Signals at Intersections

The identical legal principle of failing to stop when a signal told the driver to do so applies even outside the context of a typical street intersection.

The legal basis of rail crossings that have warning signals and gates is the same, and failure by a driver to observe the warning signal presents not only the usual danger of a red-light violation but also the much more serious danger of colliding with a train.

The Practical Reality

An accidental red-light violation is still a red-light violation in the eyes of civil law. The driver who ran it bears the resulting liability regardless of whether the mistake was careless or genuinely unintentional.

It is best to know the factors that could determine the outcome of your case. These are evidence, camera footage, witness accounts, and physical evidence at the scene. These must be gathered quickly enough to settle what would otherwise become an unresolvable dispute over who had the light.