At fault in 3 car collision -rear end?

Question

We (Me & my wife) met with a 3 car collision.
The traffic slowed down and came to a stop. I stopped my car too. The car (sedan) behind us failed to stop and push us into the pickup truck in front of us. I am quite sure i stopped when the truck in front of me stopped.

In the police statement the driver of the truck mentioned that he felt 2 taps. The police report was just based on his statement. There is no other proof mentioned in the report to say i am 100% at fault.The report didnt say anything about skid marks or any description of the accident scene. Because the police report said i was at fault, now my insurance company is saying i am at fault 100%.

I don't know what to do now. We really feel bad to pay for something that we have not done.

Please advice.

Answer 1

The theory of MSAD may be right but will not hold good if you hit a truck. The same thing happend to my wife sometime back and the insurance gave the same nose pulled down theory. She was driving a Honda civic and the truck was F150 ( or something like that).

Civic's front bumper is definitely not the same height of the rear bumper of a truck.

If the damage to the rear end of your car is less compared to the front of the car behind you then it also means that your car was pushed into the truck.
If you have rear-ended the truck in front of you before being push into then the damage to your rear-end and thr front of the car behind you should more or less be the same.

Answer 2

In general -if the front car felt two hits - that means - the middle car hit the front car. The middle car was then hit in the back and pushed back into the front car - therefore, the front car feels 2 hits.

If the middle car came to a stop and was then hit and pushed into the front car - then the front car should have only felt 1 hit.

You can also look at the damage to the cars: If the middle car has a hard hit to the front end - hood buckled - headlights, grille busted then it tends to indicate that the driver was on the brake when the car hit the one in front of it (braking pulls the nose of the car down). If there is hard damage to the front of the car and light damage to the rear of the middle car - that tells you that the middle car hit the front car hard and was then struck in the back and pushed back into the front car - but the second impact was less substantial than the first.

Skid Marks: if the car's involved are newer - then they most likely have abs brakes - these do not leave skid marks.

In general, the accident scene is not going to tell you much. Usually in these types of accidents- all 3 cars are in a line in the same lane.

Police report narratives don't talk about the accident scene or skid marks. Most police reports have bunches of boxes that officers fill in numbers. The numbers are found on a coding sheet and will help to describe the road conditions (asphalt, dry etc).

Answer 3

Were there any witnesses other than you and your wife? How about the guy that hit you? Normally, it is the guy "at the BACK" that is responsible for the damages. You may have to pay your deductible for damages to YOUR car, or, there may be a limits problem....the party that caused the incident may have minimal limits of liability coverage and it has to be shared by all injured parties..

I would talk with your insurance agent and explain the situation to him, and get HIS advice.

Good luck and hope this helps!

Answer 4

You had a hit and run accident but no police report was filed. Was the police called? Did you notify your auto insurance company ? Were there any injuries to anyone involved? Probably want to let the insurance companies work it out since the police did not file a report. If they were not notified, then you just might want to do that after you have an estimate of the cost to repair your vehicle. Suggest you not delay in talking to the police and your insurance company.