What Happens After A Car Accident That Is Your Fault? 2026

What Happens if You Are at Fault in a Car Accident?

The reason insurers and courts determine fault is to ascertain who pays whom for losses. The idea arises from simple fairness. If someone gets injured by someone else’s actions, the victim should not have to pay the medical bills and wage losses they incurred. To do so would penalize the victim and reward the wrongdoer.

Instead, the law imposes the liability for those losses on the person who caused them. This system penalizes the wrongdoer financially for their actions and ensures victims avoid the burdens caused by those actions.

Losses Recoverable in a Car Accident Case

Accident victims can seek economic damages, which is compensation for their financial losses. That compensation may cover the following:

• Past and future medical costs
• Past wage losses
• Diminishment in future earnings
• Out-of-pocket expenses

They can also seek compensation for non-economic losses. These losses relate to the impact of the victim’s injuries on their quality of life. Examples of these losses include:

• Physical pain
• Mental suffering
• Disability
• Disfigurement
• Dismemberment

For example, suppose someone lost an eye in a crash. They have pain from the injury and suffer mentally from worrying about their eyesight. They suffer partial disability, and their appearance is disfigured. Finally, they were dismembered when they lost function in a body part. As a result, they could show all five of these types of losses in their case.

When you are at fault for a crash, you become financially liable for all of the victim’s losses. To calculate the compensation you owe, you add all the economic losses they suffered and add a fair and just amount for their quality-of-life losses.

Calculating damages for pain and suffering is less straightforward than calculating economic damages. Many courts, insurance companies and attorneys use something called the “pain and suffering multiplier” to determine your non-economic damages. Here’s how the method works:

• Injuries are assigned a multiplier between 1.5 and five (serious injuries receive higher multipliers).
• Economic damages are multiplied by that number.
• The result is the compensation for pain and suffering.

For example, imagine that you cause a car accident that results in another driver suffering a traumatic brain injury (TBI). The insurance company assigns the case a multiplier of four.

The victim’s economic damages total $200,000. Multiplying that value by four indicates that their non-economic damages are $800,000, so their total damages are $1 million.

Role of Insurance

Auto insurance pays for liabilities you incur up to the policy limits. As a result, insurance coverage can significantly reduce or even eliminate your financial exposure after a crash you caused. However, it’s important to understand that insurance doesn’t make you lawsuit-proof - the injured party can still sue you personally if their damages exceed your policy limits. If that happens, you may receive a court summons, which formally notifies you of the legal action and outlines the claims made against you.

For example, suppose that you carry $35,000 in bodily injury liability and the victim suffered $20,000 in medical expenses, wage losses, and pain and suffering. Your insurer pays the entire amount since it falls under the policy limit. Conversely, if the victim had $40,000 in total losses, the insurer pays $35,000, and you pay the remaining $5,000.

Many people only carry their state’s minimum bodily injury and property damage liability insurance coverage. In many cases, these coverage limits are fairly low compared to the cost of medical care and the value of vehicles on the road. These are a few examples of state minimums:

• Louisiana: $15k bodily injury/person, $30k bodily injury/accident, $25k property damage
• Texas: $30k bodily injury/person, $60k bodily injury/accident, $25k property damage
• North Dakota: $50k bodily injury/person, $100k bodily injury/accident, $25k property damage

Medical bills for major injuries can total hundreds of thousands of dollars, and many new vehicles cost much more than $25,000.

If the injured party’s damages exceed your policy limits, your insurance company will still only pay up to your policy limit. If the injured person wants to recover the rest of their damages, they have two primary options:

• File a lawsuit against you to recover funds from your personal assets
• File a claim against their uninsured/underinsured motorist insurance

If you don’t have significant assets, the victim is unlikely to come after you personally. Their attorney will likely suggest filing a claim against their uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage.

If you find out you’re being sued, you should contact a lawyer as soon as you can. Whatever you do, don’t ignore the lawsuit. If you fail to respond, the victim could get a default judgment against you. With a judgment in place, they may be able to garnish your wages, put a lien on your property, or even take funds directly from your bank account.

Contributory and Comparative Fault

If a victim contributed to the cause of the accident, many states will reduce their compensation. In contributory fault states, the victim recovers nothing if they are even 1% at fault for the crash. In comparative fault states, the victim’s compensation is reduced in proportion to their share of the blame. A victim 18% at fault for a crash only gets compensated for 82% of their losses.

What Happens if You Are Only Partially at Fault for a Car Accident?

In many cases, car accidents don’t involve one driver who was at fault and another who was completely blameless. If you were partially liable, what happens will depend on your state’s negligence laws, which break down as follows:

Contributory Negligence States

In states using a contributory negligence standard, you can’t recover damages if you contributed to an accident. If you were only partially at fault in one of these states, the other party may not recover damages.

Pure Comparative Negligence States

In pure comparative negligence states, a driver who’s partially at fault may seek compensation from the other driver. This is true no matter how high their percentage of fault may be.

This means that even if you were 99% at fault for a crash, you could still try to recover compensation for the 1% of the accident you didn’t cause. However, any amount you recover would be reduced by 99%.

Modified Comparative Negligence States

Modified comparative negligence laws reduce compensation by each person’s percentage of fault, but they also limit who may recover damages. Most modified comparative negligence states have one of two bar rules:

• 50% Bar Rule: Drivers who are 50% or more at fault may not recover damages.
• 51% Bar Rule: Drivers who are 51% or more at fault may not recover damages.

The majority of states follow some kind of modified comparative negligence law.

Here’s an example of how modified comparative negligence laws work. Imagine a driver runs a red light and hits you. However, because you were speeding, the insurance company believes you were 20% at fault.

If a court awards you $100,000 in damages, that amount will be reduced by 20%. This means you take home $80,000.

Determining Fault for a Crash

Before getting into what happens when you are at fault for an accident, you must understand what “fault” means. Insurers and courts look at whether you acted negligently or intentionally in causing the collision.

Intentional Crashes

Intentional crashes are rare but can happen. A common cause of intentional crashes recently is road rage. If you become so enraged at another driver that you deliberately hit their car, even slightly, you will be legally liable for committing civil battery.

You can even be liable if you intentionally attempted to scare the other driver and they suffered an injury. For example, suppose that you swerved at a driver in a fit of road rage. They swerved and hit a guardrail. Your intentional attempt to scare them is a civil assault and makes you liable for the resulting losses.

Negligent Crashes

The much more common theory used to determine fault is called negligence. Negligence happens when a driver causes injuries by failing to exercise reasonable care. Accident victims can show you breached the standard of care by violating traffic laws. This includes actions like speeding, failing to yield, or a child restraint violation, which may be seen as clear signs of negligence if a child was harmed in the crash. Thus, you will be liable if you rear-ended another driver because you were following too closely and speeding when they stopped for a yellow light.

Victims can also show a breach by proving that you did something unreasonably dangerous, albeit legal. For example, no state has a law against talking on a hands-free phone, driving without a shirt, or eating while driving. But if your sandwich distracted you from seeing a stop sign, you will bear the liability for the resulting crash. Similarly, accidents involving parked cars often raise questions of fault. If you hit a parked car and fail to leave your information or report the incident as required, it can be treated as a hit-and-run, potentially increasing your liability.

How Insurance Companies Determine Fault After a Car Accident

When an insurance company investigates an accident, it may look to the police report for information. However, insurance companies are not bound to follow the determination of fault in this report.

When looking into who was at fault for car and motorcycle accidents, insurance companies send adjusters to look closely at many different factors, including:

• Photos of the accident scene
• Physical evidence
• Statements from witnesses
• Statements from other involved parties
• Traffic camera footage
• Reports from accident reconstruction experts

After a major accident, insurers for both involved parties will usually investigate. If they agree on who was at fault, the person who wasn't responsible may be able to receive a car accident settlement relatively quickly. However, if they can’t agree, the case may ultimately need to be decided in court.

Does Your Insurance Go Up After a Car Accident You Caused?

Drivers found at fault for accidents will usually see their insurance premiums go up. The good news is that the increase won’t last forever. The amount of time your accident impacts your rates will depend on the insurer. Typically, though, your rates will go up for about three to five years.

Get Support if You're at Fault in a Car Accident

If you cause a crash, you could face significant legal liabilities. ConsumerShield helps people facing thorny legal matters by connecting them with experienced attorneys to guide and advise them. Fill out our contact form for a free case evaluation and to learn how we can help you.