Who pays and who is to blame in cases of multiple car accidents?
Who pays and who is to blame in cases of multiple car accidents?
Where: Hank Stout
Published: If you have been involved in a collision with several vehicles, the chances are high that it will be much more difficult to navigate the insurance claim process.
The increased difficulty is caused by the many different possible causes of the collision.
An accident in car accident is enough to cause a considerable amount of stress, not to mention potential bodily injury and damage or loss of property.
But when you are involved in a collision with several drivers and insurance,
it can be a logistical nightmare to assign the blame and keep track of the damage process while at the same time recovering from the accident itself.
The typical multi-car accident with several cars usually occurs in one of three ways.
Do any of these scenarios sound familiar?
A car traveling unsafe at high speeds causes an accident with several cars
This scenario often takes place on Texas highways, but also happens in urban and residential areas.
This can be one of the most dangerous accidents on roads where there is a high density of vehicles and a careless, speeding driver – often during rush hour traffic –
affects a vehicle while trying to make an unsafe lane change or another dangerous maneuver to jump into traffic.
The insecure driver usually hits a car and bounces off another car, which leads to the other two cars hitting someone or something else in the process.
Here is an example of what happened recently during a case we were working on:
A driver traveling south on the Gulf Freeway in Houston made an unsafe lane change at high speed,
causing the car in the lane he changed lanes to cause his vehicle to turn toward a semi-truck to avoid a collision.
Unfortunately, when the driver who turned his car to avoid the collision tried to correct the vehicle, it hit another driver who was traveling right in front of him in the same lane.
And because the cars were traveling at high speed, the car that “bumped out” spun and ended up in the opposite direction in the oncoming traffic, which led to two other cars colliding.
And even though several drivers and vehicles were involved in this accident, the driver responsible for the accident was the one
who first made the unsafe lane change, and thus his insurance company was responsible for paying.
Insurance companies that have to deal with a claim for damages where several drivers are involved often drag out the time and delay the claims for damages in an attempt to minimize what they pay the victims.
A driver is hit from behind by a careless driver,
causing a chain reaction of collisions involving drivers in the same lane
This is also a common car accident scenario and many times the driver who affected the vehicle
from behind is the source of the accident and therefore bears the blame.
However, when an accident with a “chain reaction” occurs, investigators also look at whether
the vehicles involved in the chain reaction themselves drove safely –
for example, by not following too closely behind another vehicle, an unsafe driving style may indicate a partial fault.
Take, for example, this case:
A driver towing another vehicle driving west on East Houston
stops at East Houston due to heavy traffic at the upcoming intersection.
The driver of the vehicle traveling behind the truck tries to stop but fails and affects the towed car. Another driver behind that driver also fails to stop and drive into the car.
Finally, another car traveling much faster also affects the last vehicle that was hit.
Who is to blame?
This is a rather complicated accident site because unsafe driving by several drivers caused the collision. The last two vehicles, for example, failed to keep a safe distance from the vehicle they collided with,
which was a contributing factor to their collision with the cars.
The last driver, in particular, the one at the back, drove both too fast and failed to keep his distance. These types of cases involve several parties, several drivers who were guilty, and of course several insurances.
Finding out who should pay and what factors contributed to this type of accident
can be extremely difficult without a legal expert on your side.