If you go to driving school, you should learn about basic driving concepts. You’ll learn about stop signs, proper intersection behavior, and how to get onto the highway safely. You should also learn about the right-of-way concept.
Understanding what having the right-of-way means as a motorist becomes crucial if you want to stay safe on the road. You need to master this concept to keep other drivers and their passengers safe as well.
We’ll talk about this notion now. Most people feel they can master this concept easily enough, but some still struggle with it once they have their license and they’re out on the road in various situations.
What Does Having the Right-of-Way Mean?
Let’s start by defining this concept as simply as possible. If you have the right-of-way as a driver, that means you have the legal authority to proceed, while others must wait. In essence, if you have the right-of-way, you can legally go, while other drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians must wait their turns.
That seems simple enough. For instance, if you arrive at a four-way intersection, and you have a stop sign, you have the right-of-way if you come to a complete stop before a driver on your left or right gets to their own stop sign. You can go with confidence knowing that they will wait for you, assuming they know the right-of-way rule and they are following it.
Why Some People Can’t Quite Grasp This Concept
Explained in that way, the right-of-way concept probably does not seem very complex. Why do some drivers seem to struggle with it, though?
Sometimes, it is because they do not know who has the right-of-way in a particular situation. For instance, maybe you have a driver who approaches a four-way intersection. They want to turn left. They put on their signal indicating they will turn once they get the chance.
They have a green arrow for which they can wait. However, they can also go if the light in their favor turns solid green, provided there is no other driver coming from the opposite direction.
This driver, if they’re inexperienced, might think that they have the right-of-way if they see that they have the green light. They might try to make their left turn, even if they see a car coming from the other direction.
This driver does not realize that even though they have a green light, they do not have the right-of-way. The driver coming from the other direction who wants to go straight through the light has it.
If the first driver doesn’t know to wait for the green arrow, and they try to turn when it’s not safe to do so, they can cause a collision. They saw a green light and thought they could go, little suspecting that the other driver could legally go before them.
Another Reason Why This Concept Presents Some Difficulties
You can certainly point to not knowing certain traffic laws as a reason why some drivers have issues with the right-of-way concept. There’s another reason why this notion seems tough for some people to grasp, though.
If you have the right-of-way, that means that you need to go, particularly if you’re in a situation with several other drivers waiting their turn. In other words, it’s not so much that you can go before the other drivers do. It’s more that you must go. You have no alternative.
If you have the right-of-way in a particular traffic situation, but you decide not to go for some reason, that confuses the other drivers and causes general havoc. For example, if you approach in intersection, and you stop at a stop sign before another driver gets to theirs, you must go so that the other driver can take their turn next.
If you don’t go, and you just keep sitting there, the other driver will not know what you’re doing. Your actions can confuse and frustrate them. If you have the right-of-way, but you don’t go, you make an accident more likely because you are not following the rules of the road, even if you’re trying to be nice.
What Happens When Confusion Comes In
If someone doesn’t know that they should go next if they have the right-of-way, or if they don’t go because they’re not aware of how to act in a certain traffic situation, then that makes a collision probable. If someone sees another driver acting in a perplexing way, they may not know how to react. They might do something erratic because they’re facing a situation that seems out of the ordinary.
If you don’t go when you have the right-of-way, and that causes an accident, then the others drivers involved might blame you, and they could sue you as well. If you had the right-of-way but refused to go, that created an unsafe situation.
How to Approach Driving with the Right-of-Way Rules in Mind
You need to try to act as a driver with two concepts in mind concerning the right-of-way. First, you should know that if you have the right-of-way, and you have other cars and traffic surrounding you, then you must go when your turn comes.
You have no alternative. If you don’t go when it’s your turn, then you risk infuriating the other drivers around you.
You might cause an accident or a road rage incident. In addition, you must try to learn who has the right-of-way in virtually any traffic situation you may encounter.
If you’re not an experienced driver yet, and you realize that you don’t fully know who has the right-of-way in certain scenarios, then study before you get back out on the road. You can probably find plenty of books or articles on the subject, or you might watch some YouTube videos about it instead.
As you become more experienced, you should know who has the right-of-way in virtually any situation. Just try to follow those rules and you should do fine.