Col.
A lot of years ago, prior to me getting my drivers licence in NSW, I spent two years, almost on a daily basis at work, reading a document which was available for free from the NSW motor registry offices. It was the official document, as also used by the Police department, and contained two parts; the Act and the Regulations.
The name of the document was:-
The New South Wales Motor Traffic Act and Regulations 1909 as Amended.
From a fading memory, the original regulation was this:-
“When two vehicles are approaching an intersection so that if they both continue will arrive at the same point and collide the driver of the vehicle which has the other vehicle on the right must slow down or stop to allow the vehicle on the right to pass in front thereof.”
Over a period of time it was understood that that regulation had a problem of visibility. The approach taken was to create a new regulation which involved a Stop sign. The Stop sign applied to the driver of the vehicle on the right and required the vehicle on the right to come to a complete stop before proceeding. The Stop signs were placed as close to the intersections as possible so that the vehicle on the right could be clearly seen by the driver of the vehicle on the left.
But the new Stop regulation in no way altered the original give way to the right regulation. All it did was put the onus on the driver of the vehicle on the right to stop before proceeding. Once the vehicle on the right had stopped the driver of the vehicle on the right could proceed.
It was then understood that that situation also had problems. In particular, high volumes of fast moving traffic still had to give way to the right, bad idea. So they changed the regulations once again. They changed the requirement from ‘Stop’ to ‘Stop and Give Way’.
That original regulation of “Give Way to the Right” has evolved over time. It now depends on the “Local Law” as applied to a particular intersection via official law, which includes signage but is not limited to signage.
If you are referring to T-intersections then that law has changed as well. The driver of the vehicle on the run of the tee does not have to give way to the vehicle on the branch of the tee even if the branch is on the driver’s right.
A general interpretation of the “Give Way to the Right Regulation” would be that we still give way to the right unless some other regulation is in force at the time.
Other regulations include T-intersections, other official signs such as traffic lights, stop signs, give way signs, give way lines and roundabouts.
At a roundabout there is no ‘give way to the right’ regulation because the regulation is to ‘give way to all vehicles already on the roundabout’. Also at a roundabout, we have to give way to trams approaching the roundabout. The difference here is ‘in the roundabout’ as opposed to ‘approaching the roundabout’.
Another regulation which applies is that we should not move into the path of an approaching police or emergency vehicle which is displaying a warning signal. Whether or not the emergency vehicle is required to sound a warning signal, I don’t know. (It would seem unreasonable to me for a deaf driver to have to respond to a sound.) In either case, that would mean approaching from the left or right or turning.
Murky waters…
As Rain has said, there is a general responsibility to avoid a collision.
That is correct, but it could be overruled by other legal requirements.
Another legal requirement is to obey any reasonable direction given by a police officer. The problem with that is that the word ‘reasonable’ was once defined as what the police officer thinks is reasonable, not the driver. The police office could instruct you, as the driver of a vehicle, to break the law. If the police officer thought it reasonable to instruct you to break the law then, by regulation, you should follow that instruction else you are breaking the law.
Example: Police officer; “Driver, I want you to use your vehicle to ram that vehicle out of the way. There is an ambulance coming and it won’t be able to get through if you don’t”.
So despite the intension of the general law, not to deliberately cause a collision, we cause a deliberate collision to obey the law. The law is local to the conditions and supersedes any generally applicable law.
If anyone thinks this is fanciful then they had better think again. Very often the generally applicable law actually originates from industrial practice. In particular, in some areas some emergency vehicles operate differently. For example: we had better not park our vehicle in the wrong place in an oil refinery. As far as I know, the only reason a fire tender might stop while going to a fire, for a vehicle blocking its path, is to check if anyone is in that vehicle else that vehicle becomes expendable. That vehicle then becomes, in the vernacular of current usage, collateral damage.
But, in general then, the traffic regulations only give guidance as to how to behave. A breach of the regulations only proportions the responsibility to the parties concerned based on the applicable laws at the time. Mostly both parties are to be held responsible to some degree; seldom is one party completely exonerated.
Across Australia the legislation has been generalised since Dec-1999.
Further reading if you require it; current as at 5 April 2013:-
http://www.legislation.qld.gov.au/LEGISLTN/CURRENT/T/TrantOpRURR09.pdf
Chris.
unless you can name it and quote the passage that you are referring to.
