[ChevLoRay]

A friend of mine, who is a bit older, had a nearly new '53 Plymouth when he was in the USAF. He was home on leave, and had just backed out of a parking place (angle parking) when the owner of the local Pontiac dealership rounded the corner and rear-ended him. My friend got a ticket for something that the police invented on the spot. He got a call from a lawyer, whose office was on the opposite side of the street and who had witnessed the whole event, and it was on!! A call to the owner of the dealership resulted in my friend getting his car fixed and the ticket was voided.

If you are rear-ended by another vehicle, AND your vehicle is "square" with the traffic....whether or not your foot is on the brake.....whether or not you may have just stopped or just started.....getting hit from the back is simply called "Following too closely with an accident" in Arkansas. But, the catch-all ticket is now called, "Failure to maintain control (of your vehicle)". My younger brother, in an attempt to avoid hitting a Coca-Cola tractor/trailer rig that was in his lane, hit the brakes and turned sideways, putting the right side of his truck parallel with the front bumper of the tractor, which had swung into his lane to make a right turn from a side street. Saved his life. The State Police issued my bro a ticket for "failure to maintain control". It went to court. The judge didn't buy the logic for the ticket, but said it had to stand. It didn't matter that the other vehicle was in the wrong lane. It seems that we are supposed to anticipate anything that another driver can possibly do, and take steps to avoid them, in order to "maintain control".

Reminds me of the story about a man who had a head-on collision with a womon who was driving the wrong way on a one-way street. When the police arrived, the man said it was his fault, not the lady. When the policeman asked how that could be, the man said, "I saw her coming for two blocks. I could have turned onto another street, but I didn't. So, it's my fault."