Let’s say Driver A makes an illegal turn. This causes Driver B to have to swerve to avoid the oncoming Driver A, but B smashes into C’s car as a result.
Is Driver A legally liable for the crash, assuming he/she can be tracked down by authorities? Or is Driver B the one who’d be legally responsible since it was his/her car that hit Driver C?
Morally, Driver A is at fault, of course, but what about the legal technicalities?
On a similar note: Suppose A stops suddenly. B jams on his brakes, but manages to stop 1 meter before hitting A. C isn’t so lucky. C hits B which forces B that final meter to hit A. Does A sue B, who must then recover those damages from C? Now suppose C is a hit-and-run. Does B have to pay for A’s damages?
Good question, but, you’d have to prove this in court. This would be hard with anything other than footage.
As for the second post, I was in a similar situation. Bumper-to-bumper traffic to work, it opened up a little only to result in an emergency stop scenario. I (B) just stopped behind the car in front of me (A), literally inches away. The guy behind me in a big truck ©, hit me and pushed me into the guy in front of me.
Various communications with C’s insurance was tricky, they were trying not to pay for all my damages. They brought up the minimum safe distance thing, which was a mistake on their part. The mistake being that the minimum safe driving distance is for each driver, A, B, C, to maintain the distance. A and B did but not C. Their bringing this up was the turning point to shift the accident into my favor. Examination of the front bumper impact yielded that the car was not nose-diving at the time, damage to the rear of my car and the front of C’s truck, was tell-tale of a vehicle nose-diving into another. Additionally, A only felt one impact, of C hitting me and then pushing me into A, and not two impacts, B hitting A followed by C hitting B therefore A.
So, I felt like a champion coming out of this without having to pay for any of it. FYI: C was on his cellphone as when I heard him screeching to a stop I saw his mouth agape with the phone held to the side of his head.
For work, as I was in the Navy at the time, was tricky. C was a SNCO and I was a mere NCO, my fault by default. They were also angry with me for going through insurance instead of doing it “good 'ol boy” style which would not have been in my favor. The car, our only one at the time, was in the shop for two weeks and total damage with car rental was about $8k.
I was once car B in the second scenario. I got sandwiched between two Chevy C-10 pickups, turning my 1983 Datsun Nissan Sentra Diesel into an accordion. Driver of truck A ended up with some rust scraped off of his trailer hitch ball, shrugged it off, and left. Truck C had its front plate holder knocked off. I got $1100 from truck C’s insurance company for my 17 year-old car that I originally got for $750 and had driven for seven and a half years. It’s been sixteen years now, and I still wish I had that car back.
Well, that precise scenario happened to me in June of '12. I was B.
Very wet roads and a huge line waiting to turn left at the light ahead when there’s normally never a line that long there (1/4 mile or so). I have ABS and managed to stop short yes no more than 3 feet from her bumper, but at an angle-I was prepared to hop the curb to avoid her if necessary, but the ABS did its job so I didn’t need to.
Just as I was breathing a sigh of relief, I hear the loud squeal from behind me. C pushed me into her pretty hard, destroying my right headlight and pushing me all the way up over the curb onto the grass.
Now, I swear I never touched her first, but in my nervousness my dyslexia got the best of me and I said “I almost missed you!”, intended meaning being that I would have missed you if C hadn’t pushed me into you. But she told that to the cop and she (cop) believed her and not me, despite the obvious physics indications that he hit me much harder than I (allegedly would have) hit her, so I got 50% blame for her damage (which was just a dent in the metal bumper).
Turned out C’s insurance was utter crap, mine was Allstate, hence her lie, figuring that she had a much better chance of getting something out of me vs. him. Allstate tried to recover my $500 deductible from the bastard, but got nowhere. Meanwhile she sued me for her “injuries”, using one of those faux-sincere ambulance chasers who advertise on TV whom we all know are crooked as the day is long (their letter of intent was hilarious, blowing what would have been nothing more than a small tap into a “huge wallop”). But she must have gotten an attack of conscience at some point and quietly dropped her suit.
I probably would have won, given that I had ABS and C didn’t, along with the lack of two distinct impact points on her bumper.
In a situation similar to bizerta’s, I was once stopped at a stoplight when I was rear ended by a minivan pushing my little S10 pickup into the back of a Corolla. Then we were all rear ended by a kid in an old beater Impala. The tow truck literally had to hook the back end of my truck to pull the minivan out from under it from the impact.
The insurance companies involved assigned no blame to me or the driver of the Corolla, 75% of the damage to my truck to the minivan driver and 25% to the Impala driver. However, they had to duke it out with the Impala driver, as he was uninsured. On top of that, minivan, me and Impala were all named in a suit by Corolla for causing a miscarriage as the result of the accident.
The attorneys for my insurance company managed to get me dropped from the suit. I’m not sure what happened with minivan and Impala.
And the lack of a nosedive thing, thank you electronbee (mental note made for the future)…
In addition to nose dive/impact elevations you can also look at placement of debris fields if there are any. If the middle car is 16 feet long and the piles of glass/plastic/antifreeze are more than 16 feet apart it’s a slam dunk that the middle car was pushed into the car ahead.
As for the OP, generally speaking you’re not allowed to cause an accident while trying to avoid another. That’s just a general rule. Ultimately it will come down to the details of the particular event: who saw what and when, who had how much time to react, what were their options, why did they do what they did, why did they not have other options and should they have, etc.
For bizerta’s tag along, C will usually owe it all because I believe most jurisdictions have a rebuttable presumption of negligence against the rear driver. Rebuttable: A may be required to explain why they stopped abruptly. If it looks like they were brake checking someone or some other shenannigans were up, all bets are off and A could be found partly liable.
This is why I would like either: A) dash cams to be mandatory equipment, or B) a hefty insurance discount for having one.
The related term when ‘Driver A’ drives off is a non-contact hit and run, so yes they are in the equation for liability.
The short answer is, “it depends”. Mostly, it depends on whether Driver B’s swerve was a reasonable action under the circumstances. Swerving into a lane of oncoming traffic is probably not a reasonable action. Swerving into a lane going the same way may be.
If Driver B’s action was unreasonable, then under the majority rule (tort law naturally varies a little between states) we call this concurrent causation. That is where two separate acts join to cause an injury, though neither individually would have caused the injury.
In most states, A & B will be jointly and severally liable for the damage to C (meaning they are both on the hook for the full amount of damages and C can collect that amount from either or both*.)
Now, let’s say B’s action was reasonable. In other words, B had little or no choice because of A’s actions. Under those circumstances, B’s act is called a dependent intervening cause and does not detract from A’s liability or make B liable.
*In a comparative negligence jurisdiction, the party that pays the damages will be able to recover the other wrongful party’s “contribution” from the other wrongdoer.
Don’t even need a third party for this scenario.
This rollover accident happened in Michigan in 2006; news article here. From the video, it sure looks like driver A did not contact B, but this was only because driver B swerved to avoid contact. Driver B then lost control and rolled her SUV (by luck, a state trooper happened to be driving behind them and caught the whole thing on dash cam).
So do you cite driver B for failure to control, or driver A for causing a crash?
This kind of sorta happened to me.
On our way to some white water rafting. Stuck behind some hefty traffic going down maybe half a mile, so it’s like a parking lot on this street.
My light turns green and I have to wait a bit because traffic ahead isn’t moving yet and I don’t want to block the intersection. Eventually it moves and I move up, I end up basically right at the corner. Suddenly imbecile kid, who I saw goofing around with his friends on my rearview, in this big ass van hits me and sends me plowing into the guy in front of me. Totalled my car, severely damaged the rear end of the guy in front me, but there was very little damage to my rear bumper, and no discernable damage to his already beat up and huge ass van.
Police claimed it was my fault. Stupid kid behind me said he didn’t hit me. Guy in front of me, obviously wouldn’t know either way. I was so pissed!
Oh, forgot we had a “Driver 0” who was in front who did drive off despite receiving a bit of a tap from it all.
My nephew was just saved by a dash cam. Car in front of him rolled back into him. Guy gets out real mad like. Joe showed him the cam and explained he rolled back into Joe. Guy gets back into his car and drives off.
I was in car F when traffic stopped suddenly on highway 280 in San Jose. We were traveling at 60 mph when suddenly it stops. I stopped just inches from car E. Car G was adjusting his radio when he look up and saw the traffic was stopped. I hit F who hit E who hit D who hit C who hit B who hit A. Totaled the S10 I was driving.
The CHP had only one question Did I hit the car in front of before being hit from behind. No, I was stopped first.
I received a check from G’s insurance company.
B, for buying and driving a vehicle that takes some training to master, but not keeping masterdom of it. Too bad she didn’t know how to handle the situation …
She only tipped over due to her own bad driving.
I have the precedents on my side - where there is no contact, its assumed that the car with damage made the mistake on its own.
(or had mechanical issues, or bad tyres or something.)… Quite rare to be able to involve the undamaged vehicle in the claim…
It must happen a million times a day around the world. A driver does something stupid or inept which causes others to collide. The drivers in the collision are left to sort out their own claims while the cause of the whole mess drives away, blissfully unaware; or not caring; or not wanting a conversation with the local law enforcement.
Although in practice, it can be difficult to show A’s negligence, absent other witnesses or video.
By the way, thank you for actually addressing the OP. It appears that this thread is going to be full of unrelated anecdotes.
Back in the day, in Ohio at least, A would be a non-contact vehicle and at fault. Whether they could be tracked down and cited would depend upon the situation. As a LEO then and now, I’d not cite B if I was sufficiently sure that A existed. (I don’t work the street in patrol and haven’t for a long time but doubt if this has changed)
As for the numerous accounts of ACDA (assured clear distance ahead) with multiple units, the issue is did all involved vehicles come to final rest (i.e. cease motion) before the arrival and impact of the next vehicle? If yes, then you have a new crash. (Someone above noted that physical evidence will often indicate what occurred if the investigating party is willing to look for it) As a rookie I once had a seven vehicle crash which was, per the above, three distinct crashes. On the main drag. At high noon. In the rain.
Fun times.
I also had an incident similar to Snnipe 70E’s nephew. While stopped behind a work van at a stop sign, I noticed with some alarm that the van was backing up as the driver decided to change routes into a parking lot rather than enter the road ahead. He hit the front end of my vehicle. I was in a marked unit at the time and the poor guy almost had a heart attack. I called for the Highway Patrol to come to the crash report (SOP for my agency at the time) and the trooper assumed ACDA until he got to the witness statements. I asked him to give the at fault driver a break and he did, not citing him although his report put him as the at fault party. No serious damage to either vehicle and thus, in my mind, no need to ding a working man for a momentary lapse of attention that I was very sure he’d remember for the rest of his driving career. I’m certain that he checks both mirrors and then double checks every time he backs up now.