Quick answer: Failure to yield has no point value of its own in Maryland. It’s 1 point if nothing came of it and 3 points if it contributed to an accident — the same driving, three times the damage, purely because there was a collision. The preset fine is $110 ($150 if it contributed to a crash). And if you were in a collision, do not just pay it: paying a Maryland ticket is a guilty plea, and under this state’s contributory negligence rule an admission of any fault can wipe out your own injury claim entirely.
I’m David Waranch, and I’ve handled thousands of Maryland traffic cases. Most failure-to-yield tickets get written at the scene of a collision, while the officer pieces together what happened from two people who disagree. It’s one of the most reflexively issued citations in Maryland, and one of the most consequential to simply pay off.
If There Was a Crash, Read This Part Twice
Maryland is one of a handful of states that still applies pure contributory negligence. In plain terms: if you are found even 1% at fault for an accident, you recover nothing at all. Not a reduced amount — nothing. No medical bills, no lost wages, no car.
Paying a traffic ticket is a guilty plea — a formal admission that you failed to yield in the incident that caused the collision. The other driver’s insurance adjuster will find it — it’s a public court record they check as a matter of routine — and it hands them exactly what they need, sometimes before you’ve seen a doctor. If a crash is involved, read what a traffic ticket after a car accident really means before you touch the citation.
Paying the $110 is not the cheap option. Prepaying a Maryland preset fine is a guilty plea that puts a conviction on your record. Requesting a waiver hearing or a trial costs nothing extra to file and keeps a non-conviction disposition open — including probation before judgment under Md. Code, Crim. Proc. § 6-220, which the payment window forecloses the moment you pay. A hearing is a trade-off, not a free pass: at a waiver hearing or trial the judge can also raise the fine, up to a maximum of $500. It is still almost always the better play than mailing a check.
How Many Points Is Failure to Yield in Maryland?
Look through Md. Code, Transp. § 16-402 — the statute that assigns points to every offense in Maryland — and you will not find failure to yield anywhere on the list. That isn’t an oversight. It falls into the two catch-all provisions: subsection (a)(1) puts any moving violation that didn’t contribute to an accident at 1 point, and subsection (a)(14) puts any moving violation that contributed to an accident at 3 points.
| Scenario | Preset fine | Points |
|---|---|---|
| Failure to yield, no accident | $110 | 1 |
| Contributed to an accident | $150 | 3 |
| Contributed to a crash causing death or serious bodily injury | $750 | 3 |
So the whole point question comes down to one word: contributing. Not “was there a crash” — did your violation contribute to it. That’s a finding, and findings can be contested. One more provision almost nobody knows: § 16-402(b) says that where you’re convicted on several charges from a single incident, the MVA assesses points “only on the charge that has the highest point assessment” and “may not assess points on the remainder.” Three citations out of one collision do not mean three sets of points — only the worst one counts. For the bigger picture, see how the Maryland point system works and whether your citation is payable or must-appear.
Which Yield Law Are You Actually Charged Under?
“Failure to yield” isn’t one offense — it’s a family of them with genuinely different elements. Find the section number on your citation, because the defense depends on which one it is. For the underlying rules in detail, see who has the right of way in Maryland.
| Section | The situation | What the law requires |
|---|---|---|
| § 21-401 | Uncontrolled intersection — no signs, no lights | Yield to the vehicle approaching from your right. You have the right-of-way over anyone approaching from your left. |
| § 21-402 | Turning left across oncoming traffic (or making a U-turn) | Yield to a vehicle in the intersection “or so near to it as to be an immediate danger.” |
| § 21-403 | Stop signs, yield signs, through highways | At a stop sign, stop then yield. At a yield sign, approach with caution, yield, and stop only “if necessary.” |
| § 21-404 | Entering a highway from a driveway, parking lot, private road, or unpaved road | Stop, and yield to everything already on the highway. |
| § 21-405 | Emergency and police vehicles | Yield to an approaching emergency vehicle using lights and siren. |
Two things people get wrong constantly. A yield sign does not require you to stop — § 21-403 says approach with caution, yield, and stop only if necessary, so rolling through an empty yield sign is not a violation. And at an uncontrolled intersection, right beats left; it is not “whoever got there first.”
How Are Failure-to-Yield Tickets Defended?
The strongest defense is the one almost nobody uses on a left-turn case. Section 21-402 does not say “yield to all oncoming traffic.” It says you must yield to a vehicle in the intersection “or so near to it as to be an immediate danger.” So the question isn’t whether the other car existed — it’s whether it was an immediate danger when you began your turn. If the other driver was speeding, they were farther away than a lawful car would have been when you committed; their speed is what closed the gap, so they were not an immediate danger. The other driver’s speed becomes your defense — grounded in the statutory language, and it wins cases the whole room assumed were hopeless.
- The officer didn’t see it. This is the big one. In most failure-to-yield cases from a collision, the officer arrived afterward and is reconstructing the event from skid marks, damage, and two contradictory accounts. A citation built on inference rather than observation is a weaker case than it looks.
- “Contributing” is contestable. Even where a violation happened, whether it contributed to the accident is a separate question — and it is the whole difference between 1 point and 3.
- The sign wasn’t visible. If you’re charged under § 21-403 for a stop or yield sign obscured by foliage, turned, or knocked down, Maryland will not enforce a control device an ordinarily observant driver could not see.
- You were on the right. At an uncontrolled intersection under § 21-401, plenty of drivers get cited who actually had the right-of-way.
A Maryland failure-to-yield lawyer can appear for you, cross-examine the officer on what they actually witnessed, and separate the fact of a crash from the finding that you caused it — which is exactly the finding your insurer and any injury claim turn on. It’s the same approach I use across Maryland moving violations.
Two Things That Make It Worse
Aggressive driving. Failure to yield under § 21-403 is one of the nineteen offenses on the closed list in Transp. § 21-901.2. Commit three from that list in one continuous period of driving and you face an aggressive driving charge — 5 points and a fine up to $1,000, on top of everything else.
If you hold a CDL. A conviction follows your commercial license regardless of what happens to your personal record, and enough serious violations in a short window can trigger a federal disqualification. Commercial drivers should never just pay one of these — the downstream cost dwarfs the fine.
What Should I Do With the Ticket?
If this ticket came out of a collision, call me before you do anything with it — before you pay, and before you talk to the other driver’s insurer. There is a version of this where you pay $110 to make a piece of paper go away and quietly give up a claim worth many times that. If there was no crash and your record is clean, one point may be survivable — but it’s worth a free call to be sure. I’ll tell you straight whether it’s worth fighting.
Frequently Asked Questions
1 point normally, or 3 points if it contributed to an accident. There is no separate entry for it in Transp. section 16-402, so it falls under the general moving-violation provisions. The preset fine is $110, or $150 if it contributed to a crash.
If there was no collision and your record is clean, one point is survivable and paying may be reasonable. If there was a crash, do not pay. Paying is a guilty plea, and under Maryland’s contributory negligence rule an admission of any fault can bar your injury claim completely. A trial or waiver hearing keeps a non-conviction and probation before judgment open.
Yes, but it means the State’s case rests on inference rather than observation. The officer is reconstructing the event from skid marks, damage, and two conflicting accounts. That is a materially weaker position than the citation looks, and it is often where these cases are won.
Law Offices of David R. Waranch — 301-563-9575 · toll-free 1-877-566-2408. Hablamos Español.
Last updated: August 2026. Statutory references: Md. Code, Transp. §§ 16-402, 21-401 through 21-405, 21-901.2; Md. Code, Crim. Proc. § 6-220; District Court preset fine schedule (DC-CR-090). This page is general information about Maryland law, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship.