Without evidence, it’s hard, like in most court cases.
I had a similar three-car pileup ordeal. Going into work, the car in front of me came to a very sudden stop. I was able to stop just inches behind the vehicle, but the truck behind me was simply going to fast. Hit me and pushed me into the other car.
I almost had to pay for the damages to the front of my car and to the rear fo the car in front of me. They started an argument about me maintaining emergency stopping distance and I stated that I did maintain said distance, and that said distance is for me to come to a safe stop. Not to have enough space in front of me in the event I get rear-ended.
After rounds of interviews, the person who hit me had to pay for all the damages. Mainly because has I hit the car in front of me, and then was pushed into it again, they would have felt the impact twice. But, as it was once, it was on the truck.
This all being said, I see accidents like this on the DC beltway going west bound on 495. They have HOV lanes that are open to HOV/open to all/closed. People run down them until the very end and “go for it” and you have a five car pileup due to everyone in bumper-to-bumper traffic. It’d be awesome if they’d put a camera in at the end there to act as witness to who caused the accident, and, to catch the violators when the lane is closed.
If you just stop in the middle of traffic - you could get a ticket for something. (There’s the story about crazy Montreal drivers - the policeman asked one guy why he was stopped in the middle of the road - he said his favourite song was on the radio and if he went into the tunnel he’d lose the station…)
OTOH, if you have a (good) reason - engine died, flat tire, wheel fell off - generally you will not get a ticket, and it’s everyone else’s job to avoid you. Prudence suggests getting as far off the road as you can, but sometimes this is not an option.
I know of the Montreal guy fined for singing too loudly, and the woman imprisoned because she stopped for ducks and killed two motorcyclists, but I’ve never heard of a guy who stopped to listen to music.
Never stop for vermin. I once assisted a scooter rider who braked for a squirrel and wound up wedged underneath a minivan parked on the side of the road – he would have been perfectly fine if he ran over the critter.
The driver(s) who were involved in the actual crash could file a civil lawsuit against the Numbnuts driver that escaped unscathed. If they could identify & locate him.
But they better have good dashcam video to show a court that:
his actions were the direct cause of the accident, and
there was nothing they could have done to avoid the accident.
The second one is the hardest. There is the rule mentioned by md2000 that each driver is always supposed to be in control of their car and driving safely. An obvious response in court is ‘you could have avoided the accident if you had been driving slower, if you had been watching more closely, …’. The best you’re likely to get is for the verdict to say the other driver is x% responsible. And the amount of that is probably less than you spent on legal expenses.
I know that on our accident reports there is no box to mark “at fault.” There is a place for “contributing circumstances.” There can be multiple contributing circumstances for each vehicle, the roadway, othe non-fixed objects or other vehicles that didn’t get hit. Or there could be only one contributing factor.
There are three separate issues, what an accident report will say, what blame the insurance companies will assign, and any civil liability. It’s possible that the three can be wildly different.
