Court Opinion

ID: 9565722
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:26:31.625179+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:19:50.941823
License: Public Domain

POFF, J.,
concurring.
I concur in the Court’s decision but disagree with its analysis of the defendant’s duties under Code § 46.1-223.
Applying a predecessor to that statute, in Temple v. Ellington, 177 Va. 134, 142, 12 S.E.2d 826, 828-29 (1941), we said:
When a driver on a private road approaches an intersection, stops, and looks in both directions for approaching traffic on the public highway, acting as a reasonably prudent person exercising due care would act, he is not negligent as a mat*52ter of law if he attempts to enter the intersection under the belief that he has time and opportunity to cross safely. He is only required to yield the right of way to those lawfully approaching so near the intersection that he cannot safely enter it.
(Emphasis added.)
As noted by the majority in the case at bar, the defendant’s evidence was that “he moved slowly to a position which enabled him to see to his right and saw the plaintiff driving her car north in the southbound lane.” The Court concludes that, “even though defendant failed to comply with a portion of the statutory duty by not coming to a complete stop before entering the highway,” the defendant was not required to yield to the plaintiff’s vehicle if the plaintiff actually was driving her car in a northerly direction in the southbound lane; a driver entering a highway from a private road, the Court says, is not required to yield the right of way to a vehicle not “lawfully” approaching the intersection.
In my view, the rule stated by the Court in Temple applies only after a driver has reasonably exercised his duties both to stop and look for approaching vehicles and then only if a reasonable man would be justified in concluding that he can enter the intersection safely. Whether a driver properly has exercised such duties is a question of fact for the jury.
I also concur to express my concern that the Court’s opinion not be construed to afford a driver entering a highway from a private driveway a license to enter in the face of an obvious danger created by a motorist approaching the intersection unlawfully. The fact that the plaintiff may have been traveling in the wrong lane should not excuse the defendant’s failure to stop and look as required by § 46.1-223 if the proper exercise of those duties would have prevented the accident. See Kelley v. Henley, 208 Va. 264, 268, 156 S.E.2d 618, 621 (1967) (“The reasonable discharge of the duty to yield necessarily entailed the antecedent duties of maintaining a proper lookout and of heeding what such a lookout revealed.”).