When a Virginia resident pursues a claim in civil court regarding personal injuries suffered in a car accident, the most important cause of action in the complaint tends to be negligence. This does not mean that all car accident cases are the same, though. Indeed, the reality of the law and the infinite complexity of a potential car accident case is never that simple.
That said, car accident victims usually need to look for the answer to why the other driver was negligent before they can make a successful claim for damages. A lot of times, an injured party will have a strong sense that the other driver was negligent in a particular accident, but will not know exactly how or why the other driver was negligent. This is when it is necessary to pour over the facts and evidence pertaining to the accident to determine who was at fault and why.
Some of the more common forms of negligence that result in car collisions are disobeying traffic signals and traffic signs, failing to use a turn signal, driving over the speed limit and disregarding the weather or not driving in a fashion that is appropriate to the weather conditions. Another highly common form of negligence involves driving while intoxicated by drugs and/or alcohol. Reckless driving is also a common cause.
Most of the above forms of negligence will also land the at-fault driver with some kind of traffic citation, so sometimes, the task of finding sufficient fault and culpability for an accident does not involve any more than a cursory review of the police report regarding the crash.
The bottom line is that there are indeed a lot of ways that a Virginia car accident can happen, but at the end of the day, most car accident injury cases are based on claims of negligence committed by the at-fault party.
Source: Findlaw, “Common causes of car accidents,” accessed March. 27, 2015