Court Opinion

ID: 9602778
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 01:59:53.26901+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:02:06.512522
License: Public Domain

Buchanan, J.,
dissenting.
As I read this record White, the driver of plaintiff’s car, clearly violated the law in passing on the right of the truck. His violation was negligence which contributed to the collision and a verdict for the plaintiff in spite of that negligence ought not to stand.
Ordinarily the overtaking vehicle must pass on the left of the overtaken vehicle. Code, § 46-224. It is permitted to pass on the right only when the overtaken vehicle “is making or about to make a left turn” and its driver “has given a signal as required in § 46-234. ’ ’ Code, § 46-226.
White does not claim he thought the truck was making or about to make a left turn. He said he thought it was going over on the shoulder to park. But he admitted that it was not on the shoulder when he tried to pass. He said that only the left front and rear wheels were off the hard surface. He admits, too, that he saw no signal as required by § 46-234 to indicate that the truck was going to make a left turn. The truck driver said he signaled a right turn, but White’s evidence has to control. Thus *300it is that by White’s own testimony he passed on the right of the truck when neither of the facts on which the statute conditions that privilege existed.
Section 46-225 requires the driver of an overtaking vehicle to blow his horn before attempting to pass a vehicle proceeding in the same direction. White admits he blew no horn and gave no warning, but started by on the right at undiminished speed. This requirement of the statute is waved aside on the convenient theory that the two vehicles were not proceeding in the same direction. We must look at White’s testimony again. He said they started out proceeding in the same direction and I can’t find any evidence that they stopped proceeding in the same direction until the truck turned across the road to its right and White ran into it.
White testified that the truck passed him when he was trying to get the car started at a half to three-quarters of a mile from the place of accident. The truck was then going about 25 miles an hour but got faster. He followed, going 45 miles an hour, and was maintaining that speed when he hit the truck. That he made a modest estimate of his speed is indicated by the fact that he skidded 20 to 25 feet before hitting the truck at the back end of its cab and knocked it 32 feet.
He said the truck started getting over when it was about 100 feet away from the place of collision and was then making about 25 miles an hour and was down to 15 to 20 miles an hour when it turned in front of the car. Prior to that its left wheels were off the hard surface, so he testified. It is to be remembered that the hard surface was only 19 feet wide. White’s further' testimony showed that when the truck’s left wheels were off the hard surface its right side was still not far away from the center of the road. He said, “After he pulled over, I came up past the bed of his truck. * * And as I got about up even with his cab, he cut back in on me, and I had to hit the cab, and he was then on my side of the road.” At his avowed speed of 45 miles an hour, he could not have hit the truck at the back of its cab if it had been off of the road before starting to turn to its right, nor could it have been going in a different direction from the way the car was going when it started to turn.
White’s excuse for passing on the right was that the truck pulled to the left and he thought it was going to park. The *301excuse in Gary v. Artist, 186 Va. 616, 620, 43 S. E. (2d) 833, 835, was that the front car “stopped or slowed up to make a left turn and then made a right turn. ’ ’ The jury were instructed in that case that if the front car pulled to the left or center of the street without signal, the driver of the car following was justified in assuming that the driver of the front car was not intending to make a right-hand turn. We said that was error because it virtually told the jury that the driver of the car following could pass on the right of the car in front without having the statutory signal given him, and that would be in derogation of the terms of the statute.
The attempt to distinguish that case from this involves, in my opinion, both a strained construction of words and a mistaken view of the evidence. Section 46-226 is said not to apply unless the overtaken vehicle is “in front” of the overtaking vehicle. The statute does not use that language, but of course it contemplates that the overtaken vehicle is in front, otherwise there would be no occasion to pass it. Equally clearly it is not expected to be immediately in front. The truck here had to be somewhere to the left before there was room to pass on the right.
But the opinion puts this truck much farther to the left than the evidence puts it. The opinion says there was ample evidence to justify the conclusion that the truck had completed its left turn and pulled off the road before White passed it. White did not claim that the truck made a left turn, nor that it ever pulled off of the road. His evidence was that it veered to the left for the last 100 feet and only had its left wheels off the hard surface before it turned to the right. Defendants’ evidence was that the' truck went only a little to the left of the white line in order to turn into the road on the right, for which a proper signal had been given. The verdict must find support in the plaintiff’s evidence, and if the plaintiff’s evidence does not support it, it ought not to stand.
Plaintiff’s driver was in a hurry. The car he was driving had a hole the size of a quarter in the bottom of its gasoline tank, shaped so the driver could not stop it up tight. He put two gallons of gasoline in the tank and was trying to get back to Royal City, 16 or 17 miles away, before it leaked out. Admittedly without knowing what the truck was going to do, without slackening his own speed, and while the right side of the truck *302was close to him in the road and moving at 15 to 20 miles an hour, he took a chance and passed on the wrong side, in violation of the statute. It seems plain to me that he was negligent, if not actually reckless; that his negligence was a substantial factor in the accident, and that the plaintiff was therefore not entitled to recover.