“Hundred” dollars is an exaggeration, but an insurance company may give a ridiculously low initial settlement offer to try to control the negotiations in their favor. My point is that the real owner of the vase should have it insured independently, as otherwise he will only get what someone else’s insurance company is willing to pay.
The point is, these sound like different cases.
The driver should have buckled the child in - failure to do so is negligence, especially if it is a seatbelt-mandatory or child-seat mandatory state. An adult that fails to buckle himself in has only himself to blame.
Similarly, though, negligence on your victim’s part may lessen the case against you -is there a case where the victim would not have died if they had buckled up? I think you still get the “get them as you find them” rule. Perhaps you’d escape manslaughter charges. (This has to be established case law by now).
As for stopping short- rough rule of thumb, barring stupid reasons like sudden lane change, the rear vehicle is always at fault for a rear-end collision. You are obliged to leave enough room to stop if you have to (we just rarely do.) Thus the fault is entirely the follower’s. If the front car did something improper (sudden lane change, pulled out into traffic etc.) then yes, it’s their fault - if you have witnesses… other wise it’s your word against theirs.
(I was talking to the policeman at the station while reporting a minor fender-bender, he related the case where the guy whipped out into his lane from a side street then jammed on the brakes to wait to turn left. The (off duty) cop rear-ended him. Obviously the other guy’s fault, but he claimed he left plenty of time and room. One word against the other, the rear car loses.)
If you have a vase on your back seat and someone in front of you stops short, even if you are following the proper number of car lengths behind, you will stop short too. There’s no way you are getting around that but nice try. Therefore that vase is now trash and it’s completely your fault not mine. Therefore the cases are completely analogous.
Same thing if there is an accident and the vase is completely unsecured and gets damaged. It’s no different.
No. You must leave X car lengths in front of yourself, so that even if the car in front hits a surprise brick wall that jumped out in front of it, you can stop in time. (Like anyone leaves that much space…) Reaction time plus minimum stopping distance. All the safety and driver training material tells you this, people just ignore it.
If A stands on his brakes, he will still need X car-lengths to stop. This means B will have 2X car-lengths to stop (A’s stopping distance plus space between), a less frantic stop, lot less of a danger of load shifts etc.
Even so - any rear-end collision is a result of the lead car braking is the following car’s fault - “following too close”. After all, if A braked because a small child or a deer ran into the road, B would still be obliged to avoid hitting A and A would be blameless.
X car lengths only assures you of not hitting the other person - at least in theory. It doesn’t guarantee you of a soft, leisurely stop. Or are you of the opinion that it does, because if so, I’d like to know the last time you actually drove a car.
Ontario drivers handbook, safety space between you and the driver in front is 2 seconds (i.e. at 60mph, about 176 feet). (The PEI handbook says stay 3 seconds apart, but they’re a bunch of country bumpkins). Google stopping distance calculator, and I get it takes about 172 feet (quelle coincidence!) to stop from 60mph.
So if you left enough room, you should have around 350 feet to stop, twice the shortest stopping distance. That’s not “leisurely” but it’s certainly not “stand on the brakes”. Even allowing up to 1 sec (=88feet) to react, you still have a decent distance to stop.
Which still does not answer the real question, if you failed to tie down a vase so a simple controlled moderately strong stop (foreseeable incident) would not damage it, why should the driver, runaway child, deer, or texting teenager in the road ahead bear any liability at all?
“You take your vicitm as you find him” presumes the offending driver did something wrong, and that the vicitm of that act could not avoid the problem. (The JW issue is an obvious corollary, you cannot expect your victim to compromise their religious beliefs to save your bacon, a reasonable an assumption.)
I strongly suspect there’s a precedent court case or 10 where a child not was buckled in, or a poorly secured load shifted and caused damage in this scenario.
(PS. I drove to work this morning, the streets are slippery this time of year, nobody leaves 2 seconds space…Don’t tell me I don’t know how to drive, that’s my wife’s job. 
)
Are you actually serious? Please cite me a single case in any common law jurisdiction where any entity, human or otherwise, has EVER been held liable for damage to property inside a vehicle that was not properly secured.
If someone doesn’t have the foresight to realize that they might have to stop short, for whatever reason and doesn’t make allowance for that, I think it falls under the time honored dictum of lentus feces.
Sorry, that was my point too. I meant why should the driver in front of you bear any responsibility? it’s up to you to secure your load reasonably well in case of sudden stops.
(I’m thinking of the Rodney Dangerfield movie where the van stops due to an obstruction and suddenly there’s wedding cake splat! all over the inside of the windshield…)