Quote:
Originally Posted by Overdrive
However, in that situation it is the responsibility of the other driver to pay attention to the vehciles to their left (you) that they can every clearly see out of their driver side window, and to ensure that they leave you room to merge since you are the one with the known blind spot, in any vehicle, and therefore the right of way if you're signaling your intention to move to the right. If a collision were to occur, blame is more likely to fall to them because the contact would be to your rear, and it's impossible for them to not see you coming and yield to you.
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That is actually not always true. In some states, the right of way law is written so that the "overtaking vehicle" must yield the right of way to the vehicle being overtaken. That is supposed to refer to someone entering the lane next to them when there's already a car there, but it has been interpreted to also mean that in the case of two cars merging into the same center lane, the car to the rear,
in the blind spot, has the right of way even though they have the better visibility to be able to avoid an accident.
Additionally, that's almost always incorrect with reference to traffic entering from an on ramp. The guy on the on ramp must yield the right of way to traffic already in the travel lane, regardless of whether it's in his blind spot. While it's an asshole move not to allow traffic to merge in, the guy in the travel lane has the right of way over merging traffic.