I've posted about this before, but it's been a while.
The law in this country, according to two police officers who attended an accident with a motorcycle in which I was involved, is that if a smaller vehicle is involved in an accident with a larger vehicle and an occupant of the smaller vehicle is injured, the driver of the larger vehicle is automatically assumed to be responsible and can be placed in jail directly (I assume to make sure he/she doesn't flee). (the following account may be long, it's just backing up my statement)
I was involved in an accident about 3-4 years ago (I'm guessing - don't remember exactly) with a motorcycle. I was approaching Libertador on Sarmiento, where one of those big roundabouts are around Parque Palermo. The lights at the roundabout (kind of kills the use of a roundabout, but Argentinos wouldn't be able to navigate them anyway, giving their complete lack of cooperation on the road...) turned yellow as I was still a decent distance away. I was going about 40 KPH. It was rush hour, about 5:00 pm. A huge wall of traffic was getting ready to start up on Libertador - if I had accelerated very fast I may have possibly been able to make it before the wall started moving, but I didn't want to chance it, so I stopped.
About 15 seconds later (yeah, we were good and stopped for a bit) we felt and heard a crash as a motorcycle collided at full speed with the back left side of our car (I was with our oldest who was 15 or 16 at the time). I looked out to the left and noticed a motorcycle stretched out between my car and the car stopped at the light with us, to my left. The motorcycle had hit us so hard the bike twisted 90 degrees, came to a stop between our rear doors, and had thrown the motorcycle driver up to nearly the front on both my car and the car to the left.
I got out of the car and noticed the motorcyclist was bleeding profusely from his lower leg. A runner from the park, who was in the process of crossing Sarmiento right in front of our car (we were in the far right lane) and saw everything, came running over - he was a doctor. He grabbed a bungi cord from the motorcycle itself and made a quick little tourniquet for the driver. Unfortunately, I couldn't convince him to stay and wait for the police, who someone else had called while this was going on.
Also while the motorcyclist was being worked on by the good Samaritan who didn't want to get involved with the police, another motorcyclist stopped and came up to us, obviously a friend of the one involved in the wreck. They were both couriers of some kind, as evidenced by the boxes they were carrying on the back of their bikes. After the doctor left, I went up to the one involved, who was now sitting on the curb on the side of the road, and asked him if he was OK. He didn't answer, but his friend started asking the involved what happened. I couldn't hear his response, but his friend looked at me and said "why did you stop in the middle of the intersection? You caused the accident!"
I defended myself by saying I was stopping at a yellow light and the friend immediately interrupted me and said "Oh. You're not from here, are you? You don't understand how things work." That just incensed me and I didn't say anything else until the cops arrived.
So two cops show up - a beautiful young woman and a good-looking older guy about my age. The young one goes up and bends a knee, starts talking to the driver involved. He tells pretty much exactly what happened, even to making sure the cop understood that I stopped in the middle of a yellow light and caused the accident. At that point, the young cop surprises me by beginning to berate the driver, saying things like "you motorcyclists have no idea what the laws are, you're a terrible danger to the public and I should arrest you." (!!)
But then she calmed down and says "do you wish to press charges against this man?" The guy immediately says "Si!". I was a bit taken aback - I was obviously not the instigator of the accident, and the motorcyclist's own words convicted him. I look over at the older cop who was standing beside me, and he makes a calming gesture with a smile and indicates for me to wait a second. Then the young cop says "OK, we can take him in right now and he will spend some time in jail. Do you understand?" The guy nodes his head. then the young cop says "and we will also have to impound both his car and your motorcycle, pending the outcome of the investigation." The guy looks doubtful at that moment, but nods his head again. I'm thinking, "holy shit I'm going to have to spend the night in an Argentine jail for getting involved in a traffic accident that wasn't my fault!
So then the older cop steps forward and approaches the driver. He says "this is all fine until the investigation completes. At that point, there are cameras" and he waves his arm in a circle to indicate the area "here, here and here which caught everything. It will take awhile to get the recordings, but when we do, the judge who gets the case will know exactly what happened. If you have this man arrested and it turns out you're the one responsible for the accident, the judge will not be happy with you. Are you sure you want us to arrest this man?"
The driver starts stumbling over his own tongue as he retracts what he was requesting and says "oh no, officer, I didn't mean I wanted him arrested. Only that I wanted his insurance information so I can make a claim!" Descarado sin verguenza.
I found out about the law I mentioned after all this and when conversing with the two cops.
BTW - in two traffic accidents, neither or which were my fault and both of which resulted in blood (the other one was when I got sucker punched by the son of the man who cut me off on Carlos Pelligrini and hit the front of my car and I had to chase him down because he wouldn't stop!) the police were extremely professional and courteous. I was impressed.
