Comment by throwaway0a5e | Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwaway0a5e | Hacker News Reader

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>Seems real easy to get rear-ended.

Which, in this age of cheap ubiquitous dash-cams, isn't nearly as likely to be the "inconvenient waste of time but zero financial risk" deal it used to be

Edit: Since apparently this needs explaining, insurers will consider evidence and happily doll out blame to a party that does something dumb in proportion to their fault (with slight variations per differences in law from state to state). The fact that said dumbness results in the back of your car getting hit with the front of another only matters in the base case in which no other reliable information about the situation is available. In the case of a car that just stops in the roadway with no reason to do so some of the blame is likely to land on the driver thereof. Insurers are well aware that the rules of the road are built around redundant requirements so that crashes don't happen when one party can't or won't hold up their end. Infantile "but the other guy is responsible for.." arguments don't tend to hold much water with them when there's evidence (video or otherwise) that in the events that lead up to the accident your hand was no more forced than the other guy's were because both drivers are still bound by whatever the default responsibility to operate their vehicles in a safe manner is (wording varies by state).

I don't understand what you mean. You seem to be implying that if a driver rear-ends you he can use his dash-cam to show you were at fault? Most places I've driven it is the following car's responsibility to maintain a safe distance which includes being able to stop if the car you are following suddenly stops. Yes, brake checking is a thing and could complicate any civil suit, but mechanical (now software) failure wouldn't be that.

Yeah they should be following further back. There's no excuse to rear-ending somebody. If your car can't stop as fast as a heavy-ass Tesla, you need to be following further back. If you hit someone brake checking you, you were following too close.

You never know when someone might need to do a full, 100% brake slam to avoid something.

You never know when someone might need to do a full, 100% brake slam to avoid something.

I don't know about you, but I usually look beyond the car in front and possibly the one in front of that one too in order to anticipate braking. If it's all clear ahead and the one immediately in front suddenly brakes hard, I don't think it's clear that it isn't culpable.

> the rules of the road are built around redundant requirements so that crashes don't happen when one party can't or won't hold up their end.

Exactly; this is why brake-checking is illegal. The person behind you has a responsibility to keep a safe distance, but you also have a responsibility to not drive like a lunatic. If the dash-cam footage shows you brake-checking somebody right before the crash, don't expect to get off scot-free by blaming the guy you were fucking with.

> Which, in this age of cheap ubiquitous dash-cams, isn't nearly as likely to be the "inconvenient waste of time but zero financial risk" deal it used to be

Chance of permanent injury or death is not negligible. e.g. get rear ended by a semi, or just suffer from whiplash that doesn't go away.

To say nothing of the "inconvenience" to the driver who wasn't at fault but would have been assumed to be.

In which jurisdiction would the rear-ending driver not be at fault? He was either inattentive or failed to maintain proper distance. Sure, driving too close is common, but that doesn't make it right

The car behind who rear ends the car in front has a presumption of being at fault, but if there is evidence to show the car in front caused the accident (say, by brake checking them) then that can change the outcome.

Before dash cams, it was very rare for the car behind to be able to show any proof otherwise, so they were usually at fault unless there were credible witnesses of the brake checking.

But no, you can't just randomly threshold brake in the middle of the highway for no reason and expect to blame the car behind for your actions (or the actions of your car).

Surely rear ending a misbehaving Tesla is still the fault of the following car?

Or am I misunderstanding you?

Where I live (not the US) the only way rear-ending would be the tailing vehicle's fault is if the front vehicle was running in reverse. Otherwise, it's your responsibility to maintain a safe distance form the vehicle ahead, and one should assume this vehicle may stop unexpectedly. You're always at fault if you rear-end someone.

IIRC from law school (in the US), the driver of the back car would be rebuttably presumed to be at fault. This presumption could be rebutted, for example, if it were shown that the front car braked hard for no reason whatsoever.

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