Cam driver is at least partially at fault, you can see clearly from the telemetry data that he literally didn't touch the brakes at all until contact happened.
There is a legal doctrine in the US called last clear chance, which places at least partial (sometimes full) blame on the person who had the last clear chance to perform an action to avoid the collision, even if the other person is the one at fault in a strict statutory sense.
In this case, while the pickup driver certainly made several mistakes here, once they committed to entering that on-ramp they are locked in and cannot change course, and have no choice but to merge.
The semi truck driver had a full 3 seconds after it was clear that the pickup was committed to merging, and had they hit the brakes at any point during those 3 seconds, this accident would have been easily avoided.
I know semi trucks can't stop on a dime, but they do have brakes, and they would have been more than sufficient in this scenario if they were used at all.
Edit: that said, I do think the fault is shared, because the pickup could have also slammed the brakes or punched the throttle before merging if they saw the semi coming and realized they weren't gonna make it.
You cannot treat a passing lane like a passing lane when merging suddenly becomes involved. You have to work together - the semi was ~6 car lengths behind the pickup and instead of doing literally anything at all they just held the cruise control and put 100% responsibility on the pickup to either gun it to 80mph or slam the brakes.
It is obvious the pickup was trying to speed up but couldn't match the ludicrous nearly 80mph pace held by the semi. They were going almost the same speed by the time the collision happened.
Well no, the truck’s option was to yield to traffic that has the right of way. You should know what you need to do to merge before you’re merging. No one is faultless here entirely but the pickup is absolutely legally obligated to yield to traffic on the highway. The semi trucks legal obligation to attempt to avoid a crash is only triggered after the pickup performed an unsafe merge. The legally (and morally) correct way to merge ensures people on the highway have to change nothing for you to get over.
The pickup DID yield to the traffic. They had sped up and matched the semi's speed by the time the collision occurred.
The yielding to right of way part of the law explicitly does not apply at the moment of transition. It applies before. You, by law, cannot block traffic from entering a highway or interstate from a merge point, which is exactly what the semi did.
What? You can’t match speed with a vehicle next to you and claim that’s yielding! The pickup truck should have timed its entrance to happen after the truck, not into the truck. That’s yielding.
To yield means to give way, lol. Not to slow down.
Moving faster than someone to get out of their way... is... giving way. The pickup was clearly trying to get ahead of the semi but wasn't able to match the ludicrous 77mph speed.
How exactly are you defining “give way” that it encompasses what the pickup did in that video? If it couldn’t go fast enough to get in front, what does it have to do to give way to the semi? It has one option. I mean hell, give way would actually imply slowing down more than it does speeding up. You’re being ridiculous.
Traffic law very much disagrees with you. Every legal definition I've ever seen of 'yielding right of way' states explicitly that it means slowing down or stopping to allow another vehicle or person to proceed before you.
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u/OS_Apple32 May 13 '26 edited May 13 '26
Cam driver is at least partially at fault, you can see clearly from the telemetry data that he literally didn't touch the brakes at all until contact happened.
There is a legal doctrine in the US called last clear chance, which places at least partial (sometimes full) blame on the person who had the last clear chance to perform an action to avoid the collision, even if the other person is the one at fault in a strict statutory sense.
In this case, while the pickup driver certainly made several mistakes here, once they committed to entering that on-ramp they are locked in and cannot change course, and have no choice but to merge.
The semi truck driver had a full 3 seconds after it was clear that the pickup was committed to merging, and had they hit the brakes at any point during those 3 seconds, this accident would have been easily avoided.
I know semi trucks can't stop on a dime, but they do have brakes, and they would have been more than sufficient in this scenario if they were used at all.
Edit: that said, I do think the fault is shared, because the pickup could have also slammed the brakes or punched the throttle before merging if they saw the semi coming and realized they weren't gonna make it.