The ugly answer is this: your cousin is half right, and your chiropractor is probably getting ahead of the facts.

If a traffic signal in Jonesboro lost power and went dark, the crash does not automatically become "the city's fault." And it also does not mean the other driver's insurance gets to shrug and call it a mystery.

In Arkansas, a dark signal is generally treated like an all-way stop. That matters a lot. Every driver coming into that intersection is supposed to slow down, stop, and yield the right of way the same way they would at a four-way stop. If one driver blasted through because the usual green light wasn't there to guide them, that's negligence. If both drivers handled it badly, then you get a fight over comparative fault.

This is where people get burned.

No witness does not mean no case

When there are no neutral witnesses, the insurance company acts like the truth is whatever their insured said first. The adjuster doesn't give a damn that you were driving between home visits for work, already laid off from your main job, and now getting slammed with ER bills you can't pay because your health insurance disappeared last month. They care about leverage.

So the case becomes about evidence that doesn't talk back.

In Jonesboro, that means looking hard at the intersection itself. Was this on Caraway Road? Red Wolf Boulevard? Stadium? Near Southwest Drive where traffic stacks up and people get impatient? A dead signal at a busy Jonesboro intersection leaves a trail if somebody knows where to look fast enough.

The useful proof usually comes from:

• traffic camera or nearby business video, 911 and utility outage records, vehicle damage patterns, crash scene photos, event data from the vehicles, and the timing of the police report

A dark light from a storm-related outage is different from a malfunctioning signal that had been acting up for days. March in Arkansas is tornado season. Straight-line winds, heavy rain, and power flickers are common. If the signal lost power during a storm cell moving through Craighead County, City Water and Light or local outage records may help pin down when the intersection went dark. If the outage had already been reported and nobody responded, that is a different argument than a sudden blackout two minutes before impact.

But don't jump straight to suing the city.

The city angle is harder than people think

People hear "dark light" and immediately say the government should pay. Maybe. Sometimes. But not just because the signal was out.

The real question is whether a public entity responsible for that signal had notice of the outage or defect and failed to act reasonably. If the power failed moments earlier, that's a weak argument. If complaints had already come in, the outage lasted a long time, and no temporary traffic control showed up, then the issue gets more serious.

Arkansas claims involving a city or public agency are not like ordinary insurance claims against another driver. There are immunity issues, notice issues, and a lot of ways for that path to go nowhere if the facts aren't there. That's why "the city should pay" is sloppy advice when nobody has even nailed down whether the signal had just lost power, whether the city maintained it, or whether Entergy or another utility outage was involved.

Meanwhile, the other driver may still be plainly at fault.

The lie usually sounds simple

Most false stories in these cases are boring.

"They ran the light."

"I had the right of way."

"The light was flashing red for them."

That's why physical evidence matters more than outrage. If your front-end damage, skid marks, impact angle, airbag data, and vehicle resting positions line up with your version, the other driver's story starts to crack. If the police report notes the signal was dark on arrival, that helps too, even if the officer did not witness the crash.

And if you were a social worker on the road between client visits, your own timeline can help. Phone logs, work calendar entries, mileage apps, and employer scheduling records can place you on a normal route instead of some made-up detour. That won't prove fault by itself, but it strengthens your credibility when the other driver starts freelancing.

Insurance will try to box you in early

If you have no health coverage now, the pressure to grab quick money is brutal. That's exactly when people make bad decisions.

The other driver's insurer may push for a recorded statement before you even know how bad your injuries are. Soft-tissue injuries, disc problems, headaches, and shoulder pain often get worse in the weeks after a crash. Two weeks in is early. Way too early to act like the whole thing is resolved.

And if your own policy has medical payments coverage or uninsured/underinsured coverage, that needs a hard look too. People miss benefits sitting in their own policy because they're too focused on the liar in the other car.

What actually decides this in Jonesboro

Not gossip. Not your cousin. Not a provider making guesses about municipal liability.

What decides it is whether the evidence shows three things: the signal was dark, both drivers had to treat it like a stop, and the other driver failed to do that more than you did.

That means getting the crash report, preserving intersection video before it vanishes, checking nearby stores or banks for footage, locking down outage records, and documenting injuries before the insurer decides your gap in treatment means you weren't hurt.

If the light went out near one of Jonesboro's busy corridors and there were businesses nearby, video can disappear in days. Same with some traffic system data. Wait around arguing about who to trust, and the only story left will be the other driver's.