Rear-ended someone after cars slammed brakes with zero warning — am I really just automatically at fault?
This happened earlier this week and I'm still kind of in shock about the whole thing, so bear with me.
I was on a two-lane road keeping a comfortable following distance behind the SUV in front of me. Traffic was moving fine, no signs of anything slowing down. Then out of absolutely nowhere, a whole cluster of cars ahead just stopped — I'm talking instant, no gradual slowing, just dead stop. I found out later someone was trying to cut across traffic into a parking lot and basically froze everyone out.
The SUV in front of me stopped in time. I did not.
I braked as hard as I could — I could feel my ABS kicking in — but there wasn't enough road left. I tapped the SUV. The driver hopped out, looked at her bumper, said she was totally fine. Her car had barely a scratch.
Mine was a completely different story. The impact was enough to trigger my front airbags, my hood crumpled, and the car got towed. I ended up getting checked out at urgent care the next day because my neck and chest were really sore.
Now I'm hearing from basically everyone that rear-enders are automatically your fault no matter what. But I genuinely had a normal following distance and there were no brake lights from anyone — it was like every car just teleported to a stop simultaneously.
Does the "automatic fault" thing actually hold up legally in a situation like this? Is there any way the circumstances matter at all? I feel like I'm being set up to eat 100% of this when the whole situation was a chain reaction I couldn't have predicted.