You can get in a car accident anywhere. You might get in one on the highway or a local road. You may also get in one in an intersection.
Intersection car accidents can prove deadly in the worst of circumstances, but sometimes, they cause minimal damage. In this article, we’ll talk about them in detail. We will also explain how intersection car accidents and other kinds differ.
Table of Contents
You’re Seldom Going Fast During Intersection Car Accidents
You can cause an accident any time you’re behind the wheel, but if you’re driving on the highway, you’re probably going at a faster speed. If that happens, it’s more likely you will suffer serious injuries, like some broken bones. You can also damage your car significantly if you hit another vehicle or an inanimate object, like a concrete divider.
You might also cause a serious accident on a local road if you’re going at a decent rate of speed. However, intersection accidents often happen with vehicles driving at slower rates of speed.
That’s because people typically slow down when approaching intersections. If they’re in a line of cars waiting for their turn to get through a green light, they’re probably crawling along at a few miles per hour.
That’s why you often see car accidents in intersections that cause minor damage. When vehicles in and around intersections collide, they might simply tap each other.
It’s irritating when that happens, but it’s almost always better than a high-speed collision. If you’re in a low-speed collision in an intersection, maybe you don’t even think you need to exchange insurance information with the other driver.
Even if you think the other vehicle did little damage, though, it’s still best that you get the other’s driver’s insurance information and call the police. It might turn out that what looked like minor damage will cost more to repair than you thought.
If so, you’ll likely feel glad that you got the other driver’s insurance information, especially if you live in an at-fault state. You will need to have their insurance policy cover your vehicle’s damage.
They Might Happen Because Someone Doesn’t Know Right-of-Way Laws
Accidents in and around intersections also happen frequently because someone doesn’t understand a right-of-way law, and they make a mistake. If that happens, you might see a more serious accident than a fender bender.
For instance, maybe you have a driver who’s trying to make a left turn. They need to wait for a green arrow in their favor before they can safely go.
However, they try to turn left on a solid green light. They do not realize that they don’t have the right-of-way at that moment. The driver facing them who is going straight through the green light has the right-of-way.
Instead of waiting till there is no one coming, the driver making the left turn tries to clear the intersection before the driver coming straight through the light can hit them. They don’t make it out of the intersection in time, and the driver going straight T-bones their vehicle.
If that happens, it’s often because you have an inexperienced driver who tried to turn left when it wasn’t safe to do so. A teenager who didn’t realize their error might do this. If it happens, then hopefully they will live to learn from their mistake, and they won’t sustain many serious injuries.
They Often Happen When Someone Tries to Run a Yellow Light
There’s one additional way that intersection accidents and other kinds differ. You might see an accident occur if someone tries to get through a yellow light before it turns red.
That’s not a situation that you will see anywhere else except an intersection. The presence of that traffic light can cause an accident if you have a driver who mistimes the light or who doesn’t want to wait for the next green.
You might see another T-bone collision if a driver tries to make it through the yellow light, but it turns red while they are still in the middle of the intersection. If someone on either side of that driver pressed down on the gas the moment their light turned green, maybe they didn’t see the other vehicle passing ahead of them until it was too late.
Since many intersection car accidents happen because of people making serious driving errors, you should know to exercise even more caution when approaching one than you would anywhere else on the road.
