Whose "lane" is it?"

[allison443]

I kind of like the way the Japanese assess blame in a traffic accident (or how they used to when I lived there). They believed that, in an accident, it was rare that there was one party completely at fault. They believed that if both drivers were doing their job and paying attention that accidents could be avoided.

Whenever an accident occurred the police who responded would listen to the story of the participants and assess blame in percentages.

In the OPs case, they might decide that she was partially wrong for being a little bit in the travel lane (but it would be a necessity for her to do so to pull out) and might assess her with 50% of the cause and they would assess the guy with 50% because even though he was traveling in his lane and had authority to use ALL of his lane, it was also his job as a driver to safely make sure his lanes were clear and to avoid any obstructions to his lane.

I kind of like that idea.

We have that system in some states. It is called comparative negligence and applies to other negligence cases as well, like a slip and fall, etc. (e.g., that property owner shouldn't have had a huge hole in his walkway, but you should have been more careful about looking where you were going, etc.)
Other than the "hitting a stopped car in the rear" situations, I would say that in many if not most auto accident cases each party is found to bear a percentage of responsibility. In comparative negligence jurisdictions, the amount of your damages is then reduced by the percentage that you were responsible.

I believe in some states, if you are more than 50% responsible you cannot recover any damages at all.