Court Opinion

ID: 9538400
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 07:36:02.575024+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:57:50.502960
License: Public Domain

MAUGHAN, Justice
(dissenting).
For the following reasons I dissent.
In my view the instructions cited in the main opinion did not quite make the mark. The mark being, the higher degree of care required of the driver of a motor vehicle, above that required of a pedestrian when in a pedestrian lane. I would reverse and remand for a new trial.
While the cited instructions reflect the statutory law as written, they do not achieve what I think the law to be. They appear to me to place the pedestrian and the driver of the automobile on equal footing. My view is expressed as follows:
If the conceded right of way means anything at all, it puts the necessity of continuous observation and avoidance of injury upon the driver of the automobile when approaching a crossing, just as the necessity of the case puts the same higher *343degree of care upon the pedestrian at other places than at crossings.1
The same thought is recorded in Virginia Electric Power Co. v. Blunt’s Adm’r.,2 where the court said:
The pedestrian under such regulations for his own protection, is required to exercise a higher degree of vigilance when he crosses a street between intersections. This is because the vehicle has the superi- or right there. On the other hand, the operator of a vehicle must exercise a greater degree of vigilance at an intersection because the pedestrian has the superior right there.
The rationale underpinning pedestrian right of way cases is consonant with that in other situations where it is the duty of a nonfavored party to avoid interference or collision with the other. The rationale has been succinctly stated by this Court through Mr. Justice Crockett in Coombs v. Perry3 as follows:
. The right of way rule simply means this, that if two persons are so proceeding that if they continue their course[s] there would be danger of collision, the disfavored one must give way and the favored one may proceed . . .
That no exceptions were taken to the instructions given is of little consequence to me. This is an area of the law which is fraught with increasing danger each time a new person enters the society, and each time another vehicle is added to motorized traffic. Society would be best served by requiring proper identification of the favored and disfavored participants in occurrences such as the one at hand.
That an appellate court, in the interest of justice, may review the giving or failure to give needed instructions, see State v. Bell, Utah, 563 P.2d 186.

. Wappler v. Pacific Door and Mfg. Co., 185 Wash. 241, 53 P.2d 738 (1936).

. 158 Va. 421, 163 S.E. 329, 333 (1932).

. 2 Utah 2d 381, 275 P.2d 680 (1954); see also Fisher, Right of Way in Traffic Law Enforcement Thomas Law Book Co., 1956.