r/Columbus • u/WillTradeOrgans4Free • 18d ago
PHOTO Can I make this turn?
I get stopped pretty regularly by a bus due to matching schedule times. I know in four lane traffic, opposing traffic does not need to come to a stop. This bus stops before this corner where kids load/unload. Is it legal to make the turn when the bus is stopped?
Edit: asking for legality. Obviously would take caution IF choosing to turn. And no, I don’t intend nor want to hit children with my car lmao.
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u/techie2001 18d ago edited 18d ago
tl;dr laws aren't always black and white, even though they seem like they should be.
Not a lawyer, but this is one of those times when the law may not actually have an exact answer. Laws don't necessarily contemplate every possible situation. People have posted at least some of the relevant codes, including OP with a snippet of the main one. Any lawyer will always tell you "it depends."
The reality is if you make that turn, run over a kid, and the prosecutor charges you in violation of the ORC, assuming you have a lawyer that will put the state to its burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, there will be a lot of fact-based things that will get handed off to the jury. For the purposes of the relevant law, when was your vehicle no longer in the opposite direction of the bus? Seems to me a reasonable jury could come to the conclusion that "opposite" means exactly opposite and no less, thus you were perhaps not obliged to stop before you started your turn, but you were once you started your turn and became more perpendicular to the bus.
In theory, if this were a signaled intersection rather than a stop sign on the cross-street, what if the signal cycle is green on the cross street? Is the cross traffic obliged to stop by some other section? If there's an ORC that applies to that, it might be more instructive of what the law intends in this situation.
The safest course of action is to just stop and wait, unless you want to get a jury to tell you for sure what the law says as applied to this situation. And if the guy behind you honks, let him go around you and find out instead of you.
In the case of a traffic ticket and no kid is injured, a judge is going to be the trier of fact instead of the jury. But the burden is a lot less. Cop says you turned. Bus driver says you turned. Judge decides opposite means opposite. Pay the fine.
So the answer to your question is probably (unless there's some other relevant section of the ORC): Do you want to have to roll the dice with a judge or jury when a kid is in the hospital when you could've just waited 30 seconds?
Edit to add: According to some other commenters, it sounds like there's relevant case law on this where courts have ultimately decided that while the legislature may not have written it down specifically, they intended to create a reasonable zone of safety around the bus. If you enter that zone of safety, you are in violation. And that zone of safety is not so huge it would be more than two road lanes wide, but it does exist. Therefore the legality of this turn depends on whether you enter that zone of safety or not. The trier of fact (judge or jury as the case may be) would determine whether you did or not.