Four-Way Stop in the Rain With a Wave-Through
At 9:15 p.m. in steady rain you stop at a four-way stop on a residential street at the same instant as a pickup to your right. A third car, directly opposite you, also stops at that moment and signals for a left turn across your path. A pedestrian under an umbrella steps off the curb on your right and starts crossing the street you intend to enter. The pickup driver flashes his headlights and waves you through. You intend to go straight, and you can see the headlights of a car waiting behind the pedestrian on the cross street.
1. State the order in which the pedestrian, the pickup, the oncoming left-turner, and you should proceed, and the rule behind each step.
Read the worked answer
1. The pedestrian goes first. A pedestrian who has stepped into a crosswalk at an intersection has the right-of-way over every vehicle there, regardless of stop-sign order. Nothing about the vehicle sequence matters until the crosswalk is clear.
2. The pickup to your right goes next. All three vehicles arrived at essentially the same moment, and when arrivals are simultaneous at an all-way stop, the tiebreaker is yield to the vehicle on your right. The pickup is on your right, so it has priority over you.
3. You go before the oncoming car. The car opposite is turning left across your path. A vehicle turning left must yield to vehicles approaching from the opposite direction that are going straight or turning right - and since you and it arrived together, the yield-to-the-right tiebreaker does not rescue it; it is the left-turner.
4. The oncoming car turns last, once you and the pickup have cleared. Note that all of this is sequencing, not license: right-of-way is something others give you, never something you take.
2. The pickup driver flashes his lights and waves you through. Do you accept?
Read the worked answer
No. A courtesy wave transfers nothing.
Three reasons to decline:
- He cannot give what he does not control. His wave does not bind the oncoming left-turner, the car behind the pedestrian, or any vehicle approaching from a direction you have not checked. If you pull out and are hit, "the other driver waved me on" is not a defense.
- He may be waving you into the pedestrian's path. The pedestrian is on your right, crossing the street you want to enter - the very space you would be entering. His windshield view of that crosswalk may be worse than yours.
- He may be waiving his own turn for reasons that do not apply to you. Drivers wave people through while distracted, or while misreading who arrived first.
Accept the wave as information, not permission: re-check the crosswalk, re-check the left-turner, and proceed only when your own observations say it is clear. If you are unsure who arrived first, yield - the cost is seconds.
3. You decide you have the right-of-way over the oncoming left-turner, but the car begins its turn anyway. What now?
Read the worked answer
You yield. Right-of-way is a rule for assigning fault after the fact; it is not a shield.
In rain at night, on wet pavement, with a driver who has already misjudged the sequence:
- Cover the brake and stop short of the conflict point rather than holding your line to prove a point.
- Do not swerve left into the oncoming lane to dodge - that trades a low-speed side conflict for a head-on one.
- Assume the other driver has not seen you. Wet windshields, glare, and umbrellas on the sidewalk all degrade his view.
The defensive principle: the right-of-way belongs to whoever is willing to give it up. A driver who insists on priority in a marginal situation is trading a two-second delay for a collision that will be ruled partly his fault regardless of the technical rule.