The price of being nice: Consequences of waving a driver through

CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. (KFVS) - Have you ever waved a driver through who was trying to make a turn? Most times the driver is relying on you to make sure they can turn without getting hit by on-coming traffic.

One Cape Girardeau woman knows this scenario all too well and says this is a situation where you don’t have to be so kind.

What are some of your pet peeves while driving? For some, it’s someone tailgating, driving too slow or the lack of a turn signal. But for Brooke DeArman, it’s the left-hand turn wave-through.

“Three people in our family have been involved in a left turn, wave-through wreck,” she said.

What is a left-hand turn wave-through? It’s this scenario, a southbound car merges in the center lane to make a left-hand turn. The northbound inside lane is backed up with traffic but another driver leaves enough room and waves the southbound turning car through. The northbound car didn’t check to make sure the outside lane was clear and the car turning hit the outside lane driver.

This is a familiar situation for DeArman, her husband and her dad. DeArman and her dad were the ones to hit the turning car and her husband was the car that was waved through.

“He felt rushed. He felt rushed like the person waving him was rushing him,” she said, “It’s one of those things if people would just take a moment and maybe not wave on through and maybe just drive on forward and wait until a perfectly clear lane to turn. We would all be better off.”

In DeArman’s eyes, drivers are just too nice.

“What’s happening is it’s just people being too courteous,” DeArman said.

So for this circumstance, DeArman would rather you think of yourself than the next person on the road.

“I am trying to get the word out, make this stop,” she said.

In Cape Girardeau, the police department responds to an estimated 1,300 wrecks a year.

How many are caused by wave-throughs?

“I’d say at least once or twice a week I see a wreck where one of the parties says well someone waved me through,” said Sergeant Brad Neels, traffic supervisor.

To give you a look at how often these types of crashes happen, from the end of January to the end of April, the police department responded to eight wave-through crashes.

And something all of these reports have in common is someone motioned them to go.

“The right of way is not yours to give,” DeArman said.

And that is echoed by the police department.

“By law, you are still required to yield. If they are in the inside lane and they wave you through you are still required by law to yield to traffic in the outside lane and if you don’t, and it results in an accident you are going to be found to have failed to yield,” Neels said.

DeArman said this could all be avoided.

“I really think that there’s about five different spots in town that I think people could really take a look at,” she said.

And even further, she would like to see a new law implemented.

“I would love to see it happen, where people are doing the waving, if they are caught they are fined,” she said.

But, that may already be the case.

“There are cases out there saying, hey, in certain situations it would be negligent and you would be held liable for waving someone through,” said Grace Davis, attorney at Berkshire, Steele. “So there is a law out there. It’s just not a statute and it’s not criminalizing it because honestly sometimes it is appropriate.”

The law that Davis is talking about is common law.

“It’s essentially what would a reasonably prudent person do in a certain situation. So what would a reasonably prudent driver do? Would they wave someone on in that situation or not? What would a prudent person who is being waved on do? Would they proceed or not? Would they yield or not?” she said.

So you could pay a price for just being nice.

“If I have some sort of action whether it’s waving someone forward and I don’t personally get hit. I could still be held liable for creating the accident,” Davis said.

And if you think you can get out of that by leaving the scene, Missouri statute 577.060 says otherwise.

“So if you are involved in an accident or seen an accident, you are supposed to stay on scene and call law enforcement,” she said. But the best way to steer clear of all of this?

“You can’t trust the other driver. I wish we could,” Davis said.

Simply put, stay in your lane.

“A lot of these things could be prevented if we don’t trust other drivers so much. If we put all of the trust in ourselves to be good drivers ourselves,” DeArman said.

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