Determining Liability After a Car Wreck in Georgia: Failing to Obey a Traffic Official – OCGA 40-6-2

Who Do You Obey When a Person Is Directing Traffic?

Picture a storm that knocks out power across half of Atlanta. The lights at a busy intersection go dark, and a police officer walks out into the middle of it and starts waving cars through. The same kind of thing happens at wreck scenes and school crossings every day.

When a person is directing traffic, Georgia law says you do what that person tells you. The rule is O.C.G.A. 40-6-2. It’s only one sentence long, so we’re going to go through it a piece at a time.

First, why does a traffic law matter in an injury case? Every driver has to use reasonable care. But the fact that someone got hurt doesn’t prove the other driver was careless, and that’s where negligence per se comes in. If a driver breaks a safety law, like a rule of the road, and that causes someone’s injuries, a court can treat breaking the law as negligence in itself. Nobody has to argue over what a careful driver would have done.

What Does OCGA 40-6-2 Say?

Here’s the entire statute:

O.C.G.A. 40-6-2

No person shall fail or refuse to comply with any lawful order or direction of any law enforcement officer or firefighter, nonsworn employee or volunteer authorized under Code Section 35-1-11, or individual designated under Code Section 20-2-1131 with the authority to direct, control, or regulate traffic.

The Georgia General Assembly rewrote this section in 2019, in House Bill 459. The older version talked about police officers, police volunteers, and school-crossing guards. The current version uses broader terms, and it points to two other Code sections to define who counts. We’ll get to those.

“No Person Shall Fail or Refuse to Comply”

“Any Lawful Order or Direction”

Who Has the Authority to Direct Traffic?

What About Flaggers and Parking Attendants?

The statute doesn’t mention construction flaggers or parking attendants by name. That doesn’t mean you can drive past them however you like. Other laws still apply, including the rules for road work zones, which we cover in our article on slowing down for road work under OCGA 40-6-188, and every driver’s general duty to use ordinary care. Whether 40-6-2 itself applies depends on who the person was and who authorized them.

What If the Officer and the Traffic Light Don’t Agree?

People get confused by this. The light is red and the officer is waving you through, or the light is green and the officer has a hand up. Which one wins?

The officer. Georgia’s traffic signal statute, O.C.G.A. 40-6-20(a), requires drivers to obey lights and signs “unless otherwise directed by a police officer.” So when a police officer is directing traffic at an intersection, you follow the officer, even if the light says something different. For more on how the signals themselves work, see our articles on obeying traffic lights under OCGA 40-6-20 and what red, yellow, and green signals mean in Georgia.

Is Ignoring a Traffic Officer the Same as Fleeing the Police?

No. Fleeing or attempting to elude an officer, under O.C.G.A. 40-6-395, means willfully refusing to stop when a uniformed officer signals you to pull over. It’s a serious crime with mandatory jail time. Section 40-6-2 is about the everyday duty to follow whoever is directing traffic. We cover the fleeing statute in our article on fleeing or impersonating a police officer under OCGA 40-6-395.

Who Gets Hurt When a Driver Ignores a Traffic Officer?

Anyone directing traffic is standing in a live lane. When a driver ignores them, the person most likely to get hit is the officer or crossing guard, or a pedestrian who was crossing on their signal.

How Does 40-6-2 Affect an Injury Claim?

Under O.C.G.A. 51-1-6, a person who is hurt because someone else broke a legal duty can recover for that harm. That’s the statute Georgia courts rely on when they treat a traffic violation as negligence per se.

A violation doesn’t win the case by itself. The injured person still has to show the violation caused the wreck and the injuries, and that they’re the kind of person the law was meant to protect. The evidence usually comes down to where the officer stood, what they signaled and when, whether the driver could see them, and what the body cameras and witnesses caught.

Fault can be split, too. Under Georgia’s comparative fault statute, O.C.G.A. 51-12-33, an injured person’s recovery is reduced by their own percentage of fault, and someone who is 50 percent or more at fault can’t recover anything.

What Damages Can You Recover If Someone Ignores a Traffic Officer?

If a driver who ignored a traffic direction hurt you, your damages fall into two groups: special damages and general damages.

Special Damages Are the Losses You Can Add Up

Medical bills, the cost of future treatment, lost wages, lost earning ability, and the damage to your car are all special damages. You’ll need records for each one, and you’ll need to show the wreck caused it. To learn more about how that’s proven, read our article on the causation element.

General Damages Are the Losses Without a Price Tag

Pain, the things your body can’t do anymore, anxiety every time you get behind the wheel, missing your kid’s games because you’re in physical therapy. Nobody sends you a bill for any of that, but a Georgia jury can still award money for it.

What If Someone Was Killed?

When a wreck takes someone’s life, the family’s case is for wrongful death, not personal injury, and it has its own rules about who can bring the claim and what it covers. You can read more on our wrongful death page.

Why Do I Need a Lawyer?

The driver says the officer waved him on. The witness says the officer had a hand up. That’s how a lot of these cases start, and body camera footage, dispatch records, and the event’s traffic plan are what settle it. Some of that is only kept for a short time, so it helps to have a lawyer asking for it early while the insurance company is building its side.

How to Hire the Best Car Wreck Lawyers in Atlanta

If you or someone you love was hurt at a scene where someone was directing traffic, the Wetherington Law Firm will look at what happened. We handle car wreck cases on a contingency fee, so there’s no fee up front. Call us at 404-888-4444 or use the contact form on this page for a free consultation.

The Wetherington Law Firm Believes a Case Can Make the Roads Safer

Sometimes a wreck where someone was directing traffic also traces back to a bad detour plan or a volunteer nobody trained. If your case turns up something like that, we can use it to push the city, county, or event organizer to fix it.

This article explains Georgia law in general terms. It is not legal advice about your situation.