Car accidents are complex, especially when there are multiple vehicles involved. If you were involved in a multi-vehicle accident, you need a legal team with the knowledge, experience, and compassion to fight to get you the compensation you deserve.
What If I Am Involved in a Multi-Vehicle Accident?
- Get medical attention for yourself and others
- Call the police
- Ask for the names and phone numbers of witnesses
- Take photos of the scene, especially all the vehicles and their damages
- Contact your insurance company
- Contact a personal injury attorney who will put your best interests first
Whose Fault Was My Multi-Vehicle Accident?
It can be difficult to determine causation in multi-vehicle accidents. However, assigning liability is all about determining which driver failed their duty of care to keep other drivers safe. Anyone who drives a car has this duty of care, and the driver who violated that duty will likely bear the responsibility for the multi-vehicle accident.
Proving fault in a multi-vehicle car accident requires proving that one or more of the drivers were negligent. To prove negligence, all of the following elements must be proven:
- Each driver on the road has a duty of care to other drivers
- One or more of the drivers breached that duty of care during the accident
- The breach of the duty of care caused the multi-vehicle accident
- The breach of the duty of care caused harm
How Do You Prove Causation?
In order to have a successful personal injury lawsuit, you need to prove causation. In multi-vehicle accidents, this means you need to prove which driver(s) is responsible for the accident. Due to the complexity of multi-vehicle accidents, investigators need to perform extensive investigations of the scene. Important questions to answer are whether or not one driver’s negligence caused the chain reaction that led to the multi-vehicle accident or if multiple drivers were negligent.
Witnesses who were not involved in the crash are also vitally important because they are impartial observers. Drivers in the accident have a personal interest in the case and will likely avoid taking responsibility. However, if multiple impartial witnesses have similar observations about the accident, what really happened will become clearer.
Other important sources:
- Police reports
- Photos of damage to the vehicles
- Evidence such as skid marks and vehicle debris
- Surveillance of the scene of the accident
- Accident reconstruction experiments
Types of Multi-Vehicle Accidents
There are many types of multi-vehicle accidents, including:
- Rear-end collisions
- Head-on collisions
- T-bone accidents
- Cargo accidents
How Goldenberg Lauricella Can Help You
If you or a loved one were harmed in a multi-vehicle accident, contact the Auto Accident Attorneys at Goldenberg Lauricella. Our team has more than 35 years of experience providing the Gold standard of advocacy to our clients and helping them navigate complex litigations. Contact us today for a free consultation!