I’ll try to keep it simple, but forgive me if it’s a little long.
I was at a three lane, four way intersection with traffic lights, in the far left lane going straight. As soon as the light turned green, i began to accelerate. As soon as my rear bumper cleared the crosswalk, a car on the right side of the intersection performed a right turn, and pulled into the middle lane. I didn’t stop accelerating as he was in the middle lane. I had just cleared the intersection, when they started to pull into my lane. I slammed on the brakes when I realized he didn’t see me, but he still hit my front fender. When he started merging into my lane, I was going ~40, and he merged into me going ~25.
His argument was that I was accelerating too fast, and he assumed he’d have clearance to make it into the far left lane, since my light had just barely turned green. I think he had some merit, as my car is pretty quick, and I cleared the intersection and got up to 40 within maybe 3 seconds of the light turning green.
My view is that ultimately, my light was green, I never left my lane, I wasn’t breaking the speed limit, and it was his responsibility to make sure the lane he was merging into was clear.
We stopped, checked out the damage, and both decided it wasn’t worth getting insurance involved, and we could both afford to get our cars fixed out of pocket. But it did leave me wondering, if we did get insurance involved, whose fault would it be deemed? We were both pretty level headed and calm, but he still argued it was mostly my fault, and I argued it was 100 percent his