Ok NOW I get the picture. You were stopped between the yellow lines AKA emergency lane to wait for SB traffic to clear so that you can turn WB into a said gas station am I correct?
In the process of waiting in the emergency lane a SUV first blows a red light, then clips you. Your point of impact was the front driver side of your vehicle against their front driver side of their vehicle.
If you were in the yellow emergency lane WAITING to make a left and someone clips you, guess what BOTH of you are at fault it’ll be deemed as 50/50 because it’s a lane that you were NOT supposed to be in in the first place. I know it’s stupid but that’s the way things are. Because BOTH of you were at the same spot in the said lane and collided, thus the burden will be laid upon the BOTH of you.
HOWEVER if you were waiting in a DESIGNATED left turn lane, one drawn with WHITE lines and a vehicle clips you. The other vehicle will be at fault because in order to clip you the other vehicle must cross onto on coming traffic, in which case on coming traffic being you doing 0 km/h.
They’ll focus the investigation on the actual event itself, not the sequence that leads to the event in small collisions like this. Red light running part will be ignored because how far back can you go right? I mean you’re gonna write him up for red light, then write his mother up for giving birth to him? You catch my drift.
So focusing on the event of him hitting you while you are stationary, depending on what type of lane you’re in, it could either be 50% you or 0% you at fault.
Tow truck driver. The tow truck driver will most probably NOT be your witness because the local area drivers and local area police have unsaid verbal contracts. Meaning when a TC (traffic collision) occurs at a certain intersection, the police have a certain list of “preferred” tow truck drivers to attend to the scene. Now imagine if that said driver is on the police’s “preferred” list and he rats out the officer on scene for professional mis-conduct, you think he’s still going to be on the guy’s/station’s “preferred” list? I’m sorry to break this to you but towing and police are like left hand washing the right.
If what you said was true in regards to waiting to make a left instead of in the process of making a left and he writes you up for unsafe left turn. You can take the charge to court and with technical evidence such as angle of steering wheel, angle of wheels and such you can PROVE to the judge that you are NOT making a left thus deeming the unsafe left violation in-admissible in court.
I remember the first week I got my brand-new-used-truck and destroyed a guy’s civic while I was going NB on Young and he was making a left from SB Young onto EB Church. It was wet and I was doing 40 or so and the light went from green to amber and I only had 2 car lengths to stop. He thought I can stop my 6700 lb 3/4 ton truck in 2 car lengths on wet pavement. Long story short I destroyed his car. The first thing I did was I jumped out of my truck and started shooting pictures of the whole area on ALL angles while holding up all the traffic, people were honking and shit and I didn’t gave a fuck because I knew those pictures would help. Sure enough when TPS Traffic Services showed up all I had to do was show the guy my pictures and bang I was deemed 50% and so was he. Moral of the story is to keep a cheap digital camera in your cars. You never know when you’ll need it.