Basic Safe Driving Practices: Traffic Lights

Even as children, one of the first infrastructural “entities” we learn to respect is the traffic light, a godsend of the 20th century, the automated light system organizes traffic in such a manner that no two streams of traffic collide with each other thus ending the lives of those involved if not severely injuring them. This system has been doing a good job of keeping people alive so far and so we have kept this system while very rarely feeling any need to change or improve it. For as the saying goes, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

What people seem to forget, however, is that traffic lights are electronic and like all electronic things, there is a risk of it becoming defective for any reason, at any time. In other words, traffic lights aren’t perfect. That said, in the event that a defect forms in any one or two traffic lights, this can lead to disastrous results of an auto accident. The unfortunate thing is, that we put so much trust in our traffic systems that most people can’t believe it when the integrity of the system is called into question. If you’re a driver and you noticed how the traffic lights gave directions that caused an auto collision, what can you do to show courts that your argument is valid and the event you’re describing, actually happened? And more importantly, what will happen?

In most states, even if it so happened that the lights malfunctioned, you still have to adhere to basic safe driving practices. If you happen to be speeding, you will be considered partially at fault. If that just so happens not to be the case, moving forward, engineers will examine the light to get a better idea what happened to it and see if there was a malfunction.

City records will be looked over to see if there were any complaints about this specific traffic light, as if the light was truly defective or malfunctioning with the drivers contributing little or nothing to the accident, the fault lies with the city who would be found negligent in this case. Cases like this have occurred in the past where locals of a city would send in complaints to fix a specific traffic light that was causing problems for the community with the city neglecting to fix it.

This resulted in that particular city being successfully sued against and compensating those injured in the respective catalyst case. That said, if a city is found negligent for a malfunctioning traffic light, both parties involved in an accident can make claims against the city for damages with the help of a personal injury attorney from Personal injury lawyers of Long Island, NY .