Jeff Marion | February 13, 2024 | Personal Injury
Multi-car accidents are a fairly common sight here in Western New York, and not just during the snow and ice of winter. If you’re involved in one, and it wasn’t your fault, you should take a few essential steps to protect your legal rights. There are a lot of things you can do wrong that can seriously hurt your ability to get a fair settlement after a multi-vehicle accident.
In this blog post, I’ll provide a breakdown of how a multi-car collision can be very different than a crash only involving two vehicles, the legal challenges you may face, and how to maximize the likelihood of a fair outcome.
What’s So Different About a Multiple Vehicle Accident?
Multi-car crashes create their own problems. To illustrate the issue, here’s a specific example based on a chain reaction car accident case I handled a couple of years ago.
My client was stopped at a red light. Along the crossroad, two cars approached the intersection from opposite directions. One of those drivers decided to make a left turn directly in front of oncoming traffic. The two cars collided with each other, and the force of the crash pushed them into my client’s car. Unfortunately, my client suffered severe injuries as a result.
So, what are my client’s options in that scenario? And will he have any chance of receiving fair compensation? A lot hinges on how the questions about liability are answered, including whether just one or both of the other drivers are at fault, and what kind of insurance coverage is available.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the key concepts here and explore how they can quickly become complicated after a multiple-vehicle collision.
Insurance Coverage Minimums
Under New York state law, drivers are only required to carry $25,000 in bodily injury liability coverage per person and $50,000 per accident.
Imagine that, after a careful investigation, it’s determined that 100% of the blame for the multi-car pile-up falls on the left-turning driver, who is only carrying minimum insurance coverage. Let’s also say that, in addition to my client, two individuals in the third vehicle (not the one driven by the at-fault driver) were badly hurt.
Now you’ve got three badly hurt individuals and only $50,000 in coverage to split between them. That’s nowhere near enough to go around. And even then, it’s not necessarily going to be split evenly between all three individuals. The case might get tied up in court as attorneys fight over how much of a slice of the pie each person gets.
Joint and Several Liability
However, crashes involving three or more vehicles don’t always have a single at-fault driver. Let’s imagine instead that, after an investigation, we determine that the turning driver is mostly to blame (95%), but the driver who was going straight also contributed to the accident (5%) because they were on their phone as they approached the intersection.
Let’s also say that the 5% at-fault driver had a robust insurance policy with $1 million in total liability coverage.
That little 5% would make a massive difference for my client due to the legal principle of joint and several liability. In New York (and most other states), as long as a driver shares some percentage of the fault (even 1%), they can be on the hook to pay all the damages.
To put this another way: If my client can show that the driver with the big insurance policy was even slightly responsible for the multi-vehicle collision, that could be the difference between having $25,000 in available coverage or $1,025,000 in available coverage to pay the claim.
What Should You Do After a Multi-Vehicle Crash?
1. Follow the Basic Steps
There are several important steps you will want to take after any car accident, regardless of the number of vehicles involved. To quickly summarize:
- Call 911 and request a police report.
- Gather as much evidence as you (safely) can at the scene. Take photos of the damage to the vehicles involved, the conditions of the roadway, debris, skid marks, your injuries—anything that would be useful evidence.
- Get contact and insurance info from the other drivers involved in the chain reaction accident.
- Get statements and contact info from any other eyewitnesses you can.
- Seek medical attention as soon as possible for any injuries or symptoms, even if they seem to be minor. Car accident injuries tend to get worse over time. And if you don’t have the right medical records to support your claim, your case will be much harder to win.
- Contact a car accident lawyer as soon as possible to review your legal options.
Beyond that, here are some extra important things to think about when three or more cars are involved in a crash.
2. Get Your Eyewitnesses Lined Up
Because multiple vehicle accidents involve multiple drivers (obviously) and often occur as a chain reaction collision that develops over time, you may not have personally witnessed all the events that contributed to the accident.
Many times over the years, I’ve taken cases where a negligent driver crashed into one car at a stop light, which pushed that car forward into a third stopped car. If you’re in that lead vehicle, you’ll want to make sure you talk to the driver of the second vehicle. That driver can be extremely helpful to your case. They can confirm that you (and they) were stopped and help you prove that the third driver is to blame.
If there are additional eyewitnesses who saw the wreck, even better. It can be extremely difficult to piece together what actually happened in a multiple-car accident, which is a major obstacle to determining fault. The more people who can corroborate the true version of events, the more likely you are to get a fair outcome.
3. Work Closely with an Experienced Car Accident Lawyer
If you’ve been seriously hurt in a car accident, it will almost always be in your best interest to seek out a good attorney. That goes double when multiple vehicles are involved, since cases like these are almost always complex and difficult to prove liability.
Your lawyer will have ideas or resources available to help investigate the crash. For example, they might work with an accident reconstructionist, or identify and obtain dash cam footage, security camera footage, vehicle “black box” data, and other critical evidence. They’ll also get and stay in touch with your eyewitnesses and, if the other drivers are represented as well, their attorneys.
Remember, too, that any and every insurance company potentially on the hook for damages is going to be out for themselves—not for you. They have no incentive to deal with you promptly or fairly. And they won’t hesitate to use your words against you if you make simple, innocent mistakes when talking with their adjusters. Your attorney can handle those discussions on your behalf or provide you with the coaching you need to protect yourself.
Speaking of insurance companies, your attorney will work hard to identify all applicable sources of insurance coverage and any evidence that supports multiple drivers being at fault for the crash. As I noted above, if you can keep a driver with a good insurance policy in the case, that could be the difference between getting the fair compensation you deserve or walking away with little to nothing.
If You’ve Been Injured, Call Jeff Marion Today
If you or someone you love has been hurt in a multi-car crash that was someone else’s fault, please talk to me. I’ve been representing personal injury victims in Buffalo and Western New York for almost 30 years. I represent victims of multi-car accidents all the time and would be happy to review your case with you for free. Dial (716)-589-6655 to request your free consultation today.
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