Determining Fault in an Auto Accident

Knowing who is at fault in a car accident is not rocket science but it does require quality discovery and preparation to prove your case. One of the goals of accident investigations is to tease out the facts and to understand any negligence that may be involved. A party's negligence often equates to fault.

Unless you reside in a no-fault state, the insurance company will have to point out the party who is negligent in an auto accident before they can pay for the damages under their auto policy. In order to do so, they need to use the elements of negligence: duty, breach, causation, and damages. To establish the party who is at fault, all these elements must be present.

The following general steps are what an insurance company and a consumer will go through in order to determine fault.

• Review the driver duty for each driver. Anyone who is behind the wheel should assume the duties of a driver, regardless if they have a license or not, whatever their age is. For the purpose of establishing the one who is at fault of the accident, the law will have to place affirmative duties to each driver. Usually, it is "look out, avoidance, and obey the rules of the road".
• Figure out if the driver breached any of their duties. This requires interviewing the involved drivers as well as determining if they followed the rules of the road and were paying attention to their circumstances.
• Determine if the persons behind the wheel attempted to avoid the car accident. The driver must attempt to avoid the accident. The other car might be at wrong but this dose not give the other car the right to hit them.
• Do both drivers understand "the rules of the road". The drivers involved need to be in full compliance of the traffic laws enforced in the road where the accident happened. There are coded traffic laws that vary from one place to another.
• Point out those duties which the driver may have breached. If the driver is alone, also determine accident fault. Lay out all those duties that were breached and pick out the one that is most substantial when compared to all the others.
• Establish a causal relationship occurring between the damage done and the breached duty.
• Discover the amount of damages. Such damages may be in the form of bodily injury or property damage. The one who is not at fault should have some proof that that specific car accident caused the injury that is being claimed. This might seem easy but there are factors that can complicate this step.

A personal injury lawyer in the Bronx for example, who is trying to establish which party is at fault should he or she should understand the injury claim in Washington Heights or where ever the car accident claim is in New York. A polished vehicle accident lawyer in Upper Manhattan should weight the duties that were breached before even attempting to present and defend their client in or out of the court room. You can find some additional legal help on this subject by reviewing most NYC accident attorney blogs that have the experience of trying injury cases in New York.