My husband was in a car accident yesterday. He was driving home from work and someone stopped at a GREEN light in front of him for no reason, so he hit the back of their car. They exchanged insurance information, but did not call the police. But today DH gets a call from our insurance company saying that the other driver said that DH is at fault! :mad: What can we do about this? How can DH be at fault if the other driver caused the accident?
DH (whatever that means) caused the accident by following too close, i.e., not in time to stop.
Well, that seems harsh. Couldn’t he just have yelled at them?
Rear-end collisions are almost always found to be the fault of the rear car. Maybe not 100% of the time, but close enough. Sorry, but “DH” is at fault.
What if the car in front had stopped for a (clueless) pedestrian crossing against the light?
Pretty much, if you rear-end someone, you are at fault. You are not supposed to be following someone so closely that they can’t stop if a pedestrian runs out in front of them and they have to stop.
Seriously, shit happens. I was once pulling out for a green light, when a police car suddenly pulled out from the cross lane with its siren blaring, and I had to stop to let the police car go through the red light. (I’m assuming he just got a call.) Anyway, the car behind me tapped my bumper and cracked one of my light covers. It cost about $25 to replace, and the guy just paid me cash, and it was very friendly, but really, he should have been able to stop.
Things happen. Cars stall at intersections all the time, balls roll out into streets, and are often followed by children. You need to be able to count on the car behind you being able to stop.
The others have addressed “fault”. Which may or may not matter depending on where on Earth you happen to live. You didn’t tell us where that is, so us discussing fault in anything but the most general tentative terms is, strictly legally speaking, premature.
I’m going to talk about “What can we do about this?”
What you or more accurately your DH (“Dear Hubby” I presume) can do is speak truthfully to your insurance company. Including anything he or the other driver said about fault while they were talking at the road side.
If he had the presence of mind to take pictures, forward them to your insurance rep.
If your car is damaged it’s appropriate to take it to a repair shop to get an estimate. Discuss this with your insurance company before you go.
No offense, but DH was at fault.
The principle here is that a car can stop at any time. It might develop a mechanical fault (a friend of mine had a brake caliper come loose, flip around, and caused the tire to lock instantly). Someone might run out in front of the car. There might be some road hazard that requires the car to stop suddenly.
Knowing that, you are always required to maintain a safe following distance. If the car in front of you suddenly stops, you need to be able to stop before hitting it. If you are too close for that to be possible, then you are following too close. In many places, you can be cited just for following too close, for exactly this reason.
The car in front stopped on a green. That doesn’t matter. If the car in front of you slams on its brakes for absolutely no reason whatsoever, you are still required to stop before you hit it.
DH either failed to stop or was following too closely and was unable to stop. Either way, DH is at fault.
There’s really no excuse for this, either. Maintaining a safe following distance is covered in every single driving test booklet for every driver’s license test I have ever seen, and has been ever since I learned to drive (and I’m an old fart). It’s taught to all 16 year-olds learning how to drive. Both you and DH should have been aware of it. The fact that you are mad proves that you don’t know what any 16 year-old taking their driver’s test is required to know. Personally, I’d recommend downloading a copy of the driver’s booklet from your local DMV or whatever serves that function in your state and studying it.
By the way, the general rule is one car length for every 15 mph. If you are closer than that, then you are following too close.
Consider yourself lucky that the only thing DH damaged was the car. If you had caused whiplash or any kind of medical issue, you’d be on the hook for lost wages and medical expenses as well.
I have a question here. Yesterday I was driving on a 4 lane arterial (2 lanes each direction, 35 mph speed limit). There were no cars in front of me for at least 500 yards, so I was happily doing the limit.
I came up to the exit from a big box store’s parking lot, and when I was roughly 50 or 75 yards away an SUV came from the parking lot into the exit and stopped. As he had stopped, I didn’t slow down, but did keep my right foot poised just above the brake pedal. After pausing for several seconds, his car suddenly accelerated into the road right in front of me. I hit the brakes, not quite locking them, and was able to slow down enough that he was up and away before I arrived at the exit lane that he had come out of. Scared the dickens out of me.
Who would have been at fault if I had been a little slower on the brakes?
He would. Driver’s are required to make sure it’s safe to do things like enter the roadway or make left turns.
Once I was sandwiched in a 5 car pile up on a downhill stretch of very icy road. A guy stopped in the left lane waiting to turn left with his signal on. The guy behind him started sliding as soon as he hit the brakes and hit him and the guy behind him did the same thing. As I was coming to safe but white knuckled stop inches before the car in front of me the guy behind me slid into me and knocked me into the car in front anyway. A cop got us all safely pulled over on a side street and while he was getting everyones information the exact same thing happened again at the same spot but with 3 cars.
In the end my insurance company said they were going to pay for the car in front of me despite the officer on the scene agreeing I wasn’t at fault. I wasn’t happy about it but it wasn’t worth fighting over. They said basically if you damage the car in front of you whatever way it happens you will have a hard time arguing you weren’t at fault.
While we’re on the topic of rear endings that aren’t your fault, I looked this up a couple of months ago, just after an incident very like described by Daylate. One thing that came up repeatedly, about as often as the driver in front suddenly throwing the car in reverse or having burnt out brake lights, that I couldn’t understand was “a driver stops suddenly to make a turn and fails to execute the turn.” How is that unavoidable for the driver behind? Or different from simply coming to a sudden and complete stop, which was sometimes also a reason the front driver could be at fault?
As my cousin was coming home one night, he acquired a tailgater on one stretch of road. As he got to the intersection where he was going to turn, he got in the right turn lane and the tailgater raced past him and turned right from the through lane, not leaving enough room to avoid a collision with the right rear of his vehicle. The insurance company paid for the damage on the tailgater’s vehicle because the dents on both vehicles showed that my cousin had run into him.
Generally speaking, the prime rule of driving is do not hit shit in your path. If someone turns left in front of you (across your path) and it can be shown that there was room to stop, you very well might shoulder some responsibility for a collision.
I would think a Designated Hitter would have quicker reflexes.
Him. That would be “failure to yield right of way.” Flowing traffic has right of way over vehicles entering the roadway. Heck, had a police officer witnessed that he could have been cited for that just for making you brake to avoid a collision.
In Texas, anyone who hits another car from the rear is automatically at fault. I’m sure other states follow that guideline. It’s based on failure to control speed to avoid an accident.
Pretty much what everyone else has said, a rear end collision is the fault of the driver behind.
Please provide a cite.
“Fault” is often more complicated, including the concept in many places of “comparative fault.”
In any event, as others have said, contact your insurance company immediately and let them handle it. That’s why you’ve been paying premiums for years.
I rear-ended a car and the car driver was cited.
I told the police that his brake lights didn’t work. They verified that they were inoperative.
The driver tried to say that the impact of my 50cc motor scooter knocked out his lights. The police didn’t buy it, and he got the ticket.
Stuff like that has to be an exception - fault for rear-ending a car is not exactly the same as every case of ‘the front of your car hit the rear of someone else’s’.
For example, you’re driving and a driver coming in the opposite direction executes a J turn and at the same time, drifts across into your lane so that regardless of your diligence and attention in braking, you cannot avoid the front end of your car smashing into the rear end of his car. Obviously not your fault.