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The aftermath of any accident is confusing and distressing, but when an accident occurs on a congested roadway, it sometimes leads to a chain reaction car accident. Determining who was at fault in this type of accident may be challenging during the chaotic aftermath. It sometimes requires a thorough investigation to identify how the accident began, who was initially at fault, and whether or not additional drivers contributed a degree of fault in the accident.
In states like Washington, it matters who causes an accident. The state’s pure comparative negligence law allows car accident victims to recover a portion of their damages even if they were partly at fault for the accident. The compensation they recover will be minus their percentage of fault.
For example, if one driver in a chain reaction car accident was 25% at fault because they were exceeding the speed limit and their damages add up to $100,000, they can recover $75,000. But how do police investigators and personal injury attorneys in Seattle discover who was at fault in a chain reaction car accident?
Chain reaction car accidents usually begin with one collision or another type of accident occurring on a roadway with fast-moving traffic in the same direction. After the initial accident, subsequent drivers are unable to stop in time to avoid the crash in front of them, causing them to crash into the stopped vehicles ahead. Then the car behind that vehicle may also fail to stop in time to avoid piling up against the crashed vehicles. The first accident caused a chain-reaction event resulting in multiple cars crashing.
Accidents involving three or more vehicles that crash or “pile up’ while moving in the same direction are known as chain reaction car accidents. As the number of cars involved in the chain reaction increases, it often becomes more and more difficult to determine who caused the initial crash that led to the pile-up.
In chain reaction car accidents, the driver of the first vehicle to crash is usually at fault for the accident; however, in some circumstances, fault could lie with another party. For instance, if the first driver crashed because of a defective tire, the tire manufacturer could be at fault and liable for damages through a product liability lawsuit. If the first driver crashed because a road maintenance agency failed to remove debris from the road, the city, county, or state agency could be at fault.
To further complicate matters, subsequent drivers may share a percentage of fault, for instance, if any of the following contributed to the accident:
While the first driver may be the most at fault for the accident, other drivers could have contributed a percentage of fault in the accident as well.
Because the burden of proving negligence by a preponderance of the evidence falls on the injury victim in a car accident, it often takes a thorough investigation to determine fault—especially in a chain reaction car accident. Proving fault requires doing the following:
A careful breakdown of each driver’s actions in the initial collision and subsequent crashes can identify how the first accident occurred and whether or not any negligence on the part of the additional drivers in the accident contributed to the pile-up.
An experienced Seattle car accident attorney with a strong history of investigating complex accident scenes, including chain reaction accidents, can help prove fault on the part of one driver or can protect a driver from bearing more than their fair share of fault in a chain reaction acciden so they can maximize the amount of compensation they recover.