Failure to Yield Accident Lawyer
A driver failed to yield, and you paid for it.
When a driver fails to yield and turns or pulls into your path, the crash is theirs, and Massachusetts law lets you recover for that collision they were required by law to prevent.
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What a failure to yield crash covers
A failure-to-yield crash happens when a driver who was supposed to wait — for oncoming traffic, for a pedestrian, for the car already in the intersection — goes anyway and drives into someone who had the right of way. If that someone was you, the collision was not a shared mistake or a piece of bad luck. It was the direct result of another driver taking a turn that the rules of the road told them to give up. A Boston personal injury attorney at Larson Law can look at how the crash happened, match it against the right-of-way rule that governed that intersection, and build the case that puts the cost of it on the driver who did not wait. The consultation is free, and there is no obligation.
There is a particular unfairness these cases carry. The person who was hurt is almost always the one who did everything right, proceeding on a green, going straight through an intersection, crossing with the signal, and the person who caused it is the one who could not wait a few seconds for their turn. Yet because the at-fault driver knows the rule was against them, they lean even harder on the story that you somehow made the crash unavoidable. Recognizing that the blame-shift is exactly what a driver caught breaking the right-of-way rule would say is the first step toward holding them to the rule they broke.
You may be second-guessing yourself already, replaying the moment and wondering whether you could have done something differently. That instinct is natural, but it is also exactly what the other driver’s insurer is counting on. The law does not ask whether a perfect driver might have avoided the crash; it asks who was required to yield and did not. Our job is to keep the focus there, on the duty the other driver broke, so that your honest uncertainty is never turned into an admission you never meant to make.
What our clients say
Why hurt drivers call us first.
- We reconstruct the right of way from the crash evidence, not the other driver’s convenient story.
- We answer the insurer’s low-impact and shared-fault arguments before they can shrink your claim.
- We line up the medical proof so every lasting cost is counted, not just the first hospital bill.
- We know the Boston intersections and rotaries where failure-to-yield crashes keep happening.
- We handle the adjusters and the paperwork so you can focus on healing, not on fighting the claim.
- No fee unless we win.
- Free case review, no obligation.
- Available 24/7 for your call.
- Decades of trial experience.
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100+ Injured Victims Helped
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How Massachusetts right-of-way law works.
Proving who had the right of way. Most failure-to-yield cases turn on a single question the law already answers: whose turn was it? Massachusetts sets out the right-of-way rules at intersecting ways in G.L. c. 89, §8, which tells a driver turning left to yield to oncoming traffic, tells a driver approaching an intersection to yield to the vehicle already there or arriving on the right, and tells a driver entering a rotary to yield to the traffic already circulating. When a driver breaks one of those rules and hits someone proceeding lawfully, the statute does most of the work of showing who was at fault.
How shared-fault arguments work. Massachusetts follows a modified comparative negligence rule under G.L. c. 231, §85. You can recover as long as you were not more at fault than the other driver, though your award is reduced by your own share. This is exactly the lever the insurer reaches for in a failure-to-yield case: if they can pin even a slice of the blame on you, they shrink what they owe. Answering that with the physical evidence is often the difference between a fair recovery and a discounted one.
The deadline that governs your claim. Under G.L. c. 260, §2A, you generally have three years from the date of the crash to file suit. Miss it and the claim is gone, no matter how clear the fault.
How your own coverage fits in. Massachusetts is a no-fault state, so your own Personal Injury Protection coverage under G.L. c. 90, §34M pays initial medical bills and part of lost wages regardless of who caused the crash. To step outside no-fault and pursue the at-fault driver for full damages, including pain and suffering, your case must meet the tort threshold in G.L. c. 231, §6D, generally more than $2,000 in medical expenses or an injury such as a fracture, permanent scarring, or loss of a sense. Serious failure-to-yield collisions routinely clear that bar, which opens the door to a full claim against the driver who did not wait.
It also helps to understand why the right-of-way rules matter beyond a single crash. They exist so drivers do not have to negotiate every intersection from scratch, because each person knows whose turn it is and can rely on the other to honor it. A driver who fails to yield does not just cause a collision, they break the shared expectation the whole system runs on, which is part of why the law treats the duty to yield so seriously and why an honest reconstruction usually places the fault where the rule already pointed.
Understanding these rules early also changes how you deal with the insurer from the first phone call. Adjusters know that most injured people have never read a word of the traffic statutes, and they use that gap to frame the crash in the light most favorable to their driver. When your side speaks the language of the right-of-way rules and the comparative-negligence standard, that framing stops working, and the conversation shifts from what the insurer wishes had happened to what the law and the evidence actually establish.
Where a failure to yield happens
Failure-to-yield crashes cluster where paths cross and one driver has to give way. In Boston that means the left turn across oncoming traffic on Massachusetts Avenue and Commonwealth Avenue, the merge and the rotary where nobody wants to lose their place, and the busy intersections downtown and in Allston and Dorchester where a driver rolling through a turn meets someone who had the green. The car that turns left into a motorcyclist it never looked for, and the sedan that pulls out of a side street into a cyclist, are the same failure wearing different clothes: a driver who moved when it was not their turn.
Because a failure to yield puts so many kinds of road users in the same danger, we handle these claims across the full range of people they hurt. We represent drivers and passengers in Boston car accidents and the far more serious Boston truck accidents, where a failure to yield by a large vehicle leaves little to survive. We stand up for the road users a turning or merging driver is most likely to overlook, from motorcyclists and pedestrians in the crosswalk to cyclists in the bike lane and riders on scooters, because when a driver fails to yield to them the injuries are rarely minor. Whatever you were doing when the crash found you, the question is the same: did the other driver have to wait, and did they?
Underneath every one of these crashes is the same small, avoidable choice: a driver who decided their few seconds mattered more than someone else’s right of way. It is rarely dramatic and almost never necessary, which is exactly what makes the outcome so hard for the injured person to accept. A claim cannot give back the health that a moment of impatience took, but it can insist that the cost of that choice falls on the person who made it rather than the person who was simply going when it was their turn.
If you are not sure whether the other driver was truly at fault, that is precisely the question we are built to answer, and the review costs you nothing.
Common failure-to-yield crashes
A failure to yield tends to produce a handful of recognizable crashes, and each one carries its own pattern of injury. The left-turn collision, where a driver turning across traffic strikes an oncoming vehicle, hits the front and driver side and drives the force straight into the people inside. The failure to yield at a stop or yield sign sends a car into cross traffic at close to full speed. The rotary and merge crashes come from a driver entering without waiting for the gap. And the crosswalk and bike-lane strikes happen when a turning driver simply never looked for the person the law told them to yield to.
The injuries follow the physics. A side-impact from a driver who failed to yield can break ribs, wrists, and hips, tear the soft tissue of the neck and back, and cause the kind of head injury that does not show on the first day. A motorcyclist, cyclist, or pedestrian hit by a turning car has no shell around them and absorbs the whole collision. These are exactly the lasting, life-altering harms the right-of-way rules exist to prevent.
None of this depends on a witness taking your side or on the other driver admitting anything. The scene records itself: the crush pattern, the debris field, the gouges in the pavement, and the settings of the signals at the moment of impact are all fixed facts by the time anyone arrives. Our job is to gather them before they are lost, line them up against the right-of-way rule that governed the intersection, and present the two together so the conclusion is the only one the evidence will support.
It is also why moving quickly matters. Pavement is swept, vehicles are repaired or scrapped, and signal-timing records are overwritten, so the physical story of a failure-to-yield crash has a short shelf life. The sooner a lawyer is involved, the more of that record can be locked down while it still exists, and the harder it becomes for the at-fault driver to invent a version of events the evidence cannot support.
Medical Bills and Future Care
Lost Wages and Earning Capacity
Pain, Suffering, and Hardship
Wrongful Death of a Loved One
What to do after the crash.
Photograph the cars and the signals
Photograph both vehicles, the point of impact, the signs and signals, and the final positions before anything is moved, because in a failure-to-yield crash the evidence shows who had the right of way.
See a doctor even if you feel fine.
See a doctor promptly even if you feel only a little shaken, because the injuries a side-impact or turning crash causes can surface days later, and an early record ties them squarely to the collision.
Call a lawyer before you settle up.
Before you accept the other driver’s version, let a lawyer prove the right of way, because the rules usually place the fault on the driver who did not wait, and the evidence clearly backs the rule up.
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Talk to us before you talk to them.
If a driver who should have yielded turned or pulled into you in Boston, you should not have to prove your own innocence to an adjuster whose job is to pay you less. Larson Law will take that fight off your hands. We will reconstruct the right of way, deal with the insurer, and make the case that the crash belongs to the driver who did not wait. Call today for a free, no-obligation consultation, and pay nothing unless we recover for you.
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Our Clients.
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Larson Law represents injured people across Boston in serious crash and injury cases. If a driver failed to yield and you were hurt, the right-of-way rules are on your side, and we will use them to hold the responsible driver accountable for what their impatience cost you.
Personal injury law in Boston answered directly.
Do I have a personal injury claim?
You may, if someone else’s carelessness caused your injury. The key questions are whether another person or company was negligent, whether that negligence caused your injury, and how serious the harm is. Many people are unsure whether their situation rises to a claim, especially when an insurer downplays it. A free review with an attorney is the best way to find out, because we can look at the facts, the evidence, and the insurance and tell you honestly whether you have a case and what it may be worth, at no cost to you.
What kinds of cases do you handle?
We handle the full range of serious injury and wrongful death cases, including car, truck, motorcycle, bus, rideshare, bicycle, and pedestrian crashes, slip and fall and other premises injuries, dog bites and animal attacks, injuries from dangerous or defective products, and fatal accidents. What these cases share is that someone was hurt by conduct that should not have happened. If you are not sure whether your situation fits, the simplest thing is to ask; the review is free, and we will tell you honestly whether we can help.
How much is my claim worth?
It depends on the severity of the injuries and their lasting effects. Value can reflect past and future medical care, lost wages and reduced earning capacity, pain and suffering, and the long-term impact of a serious or permanent injury, along with property damage in a crash. Every case is different, and the future care is often the largest part of a serious claim. Be cautious of anyone who promises a number up front; a careful attorney evaluates the claim only after reviewing how the injury happened and the full medical picture.
What if the insurer says I was partly at fault?
You can still recover as long as you were not more than half to blame. Under comparative negligence, MGL Chapter 231 Section 85, your compensation is reduced by your share of fault but not eliminated unless that share passes fifty percent. Insurers often exaggerate the injured person’s role to cut what they pay, sometimes based on little evidence. An attorney can present the full picture of how the injury happened and protect your recovery from an unfair or inflated fault argument.
Should I talk to the insurance company?
It is best to be cautious. The other side’s insurer, and sometimes even your own, may contact you quickly and sound friendly, but their goal is to limit what they pay, and an early recorded statement can be used against you while you are still hurting. You are not required to give one. An attorney can deal with the insurers for you, so you do not say something that is later taken out of context, and so the focus stays on the other side’s fault and your recovery rather than on the insurer’s bottom line.
How long do I have to file a claim?
Most injury claims must be filed within three years under MGL Chapter 260 Section 2A, and for an injured child the deadline is paused under MGL Chapter 260 Section 7. Claims involving a city or other public entity can carry much shorter notice deadlines. Because evidence fades and cameras record over their footage within days, it is best to act soon so the proof can be preserved well before any deadline approaches.
What if I cannot afford a lawyer?
You can. Larson Law handles injury claims on a contingency fee, which means there is no charge unless we recover money for you, and the first review is always free. We advance the costs of investigating the claim and working with any experts the case needs. You do not pay out of pocket while you recover, and we are only paid from a successful result. That arrangement exists so that anyone, regardless of their finances, can afford strong legal help after a serious injury.
Do I really need an attorney for my claim?
For a minor injury you may not, but for any serious injury an attorney usually makes a real difference. Insurers settle for less when no lawyer is involved, and the rules around fault, deadlines, and coverage are easy to get wrong on your own. An attorney levels the field, handles the insurers, proves the claim, and pursues the full value while you focus on recovering. Because the first review is free and we work on a contingency fee, there is no cost to find out whether you need one and what your claim may be worth.
How long will my case take?
It depends on the case. Some claims resolve in a matter of months through negotiation, while others, especially serious injuries that are still healing or cases an insurer refuses to value fairly, take longer and may require filing suit. It is usually wise not to settle until the full extent of your injuries is known, since you generally cannot reopen a claim later. An attorney can give you a realistic timeline for your situation and work to move the case as efficiently as possible without leaving money on the table.
What if a loved one died from an injury?
If an injury proved fatal, close family may bring a wrongful death claim under MGL Chapter 229. Such a claim can seek compensation for the loss of the person’s income, services, companionship, and guidance, along with funeral and related expenses. These cases are painful and the legal steps are complex, and an attorney can handle the investigation and the filings so the family can focus on each other, never paying anything up front and owing a fee only if there is a recovery.
How much does a personal injury attorney cost?
Nothing upfront. Larson Law handles personal injury claims on a contingency fee, so there is no charge unless we recover money for you, and the first review is always free. We advance the costs of investigating the claim, obtaining the records, and working with experts. We are only paid from a successful result, which lets an injured person take on the insurers without paying out of pocket while they recover, so cost is never a reason to wait to find out what your claim may be worth.
What should I do after an accident?
Get medical care right away, even if you feel okay, since some injuries appear hours or days later, and keep every record. Write down how it happened, photograph the scene, the cause, and your injuries, and get the names of any witnesses while it is fresh. Report the accident as appropriate. Avoid giving the insurer a recorded statement or signing anything before you have spoken with an attorney, who can preserve the evidence and protect both your health and your claim from the start.
Results Disclaimer: Past case results, settlements, and verdicts mentioned on this website do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome in any future case. Every case is unique and depends on its own facts and legal issues.