Fault for a Crash Caused During a Hit-and-Run Chase

Attorney Answer

Possibly, yes. Chasing another driver is your own decision, and California judges your driving by the same ordinary-care standard no matter what the person you were chasing did. A hit-and-run does not make the fleeing driver the only person answerable for everything that happens next.

The governing rule is a statute. Cal. Civ. Code § 1714(a) provides: “Everyone is responsible, not only for the result of his or her willful acts, but also for an injury occasioned to another by his or her want of ordinary care or skill in the management of his or her property or person, except so far as the latter has, willfully or by want of ordinary care, brought the injury upon himself or herself.” Nothing in it carves out a person who was chasing someone for a good reason. If the pursuit itself was unreasonable — speed, following distance, weaving, forcing the other car — that is a want of ordinary care, and the crash it produced can be traced back to it.

That does not make the fleeing driver's conduct disappear. California uses pure comparative fault. In Daly v. General Motors Corp., 20 Cal. 3d 725 (1978), the California Supreme Court reaffirmed a system that assigns responsibility in direct proportion to each party's negligence, with recovery reduced only to the extent of a party's own lack of reasonable care. In practice a fleeing driver usually carries the larger share; a pursuer who drove dangerously can still be assigned a real percentage, and that percentage can be large where the chase created the hazard.

The fleeing driver's duties are criminal ones, not permission for anyone else to enforce them. Cal. Veh. Code § 20001(a) requires a driver involved in an accident resulting in injury to another person, or in a death, to stop immediately at the scene. Cal. Veh. Code § 20002(a) imposes a comparable stopping duty where only property was damaged. Those statutes are enforced by police and prosecutors.

That is the second half of the problem. A pursuit that ends in a crash can put the person who was chasing in front of a police investigation, particularly if anyone was injured. Because of that, do not write out your own account of what happened, and do not describe your driving to anyone before you have talked to a criminal-defense attorney.

What you can do

1. Talk to a local criminal-defense attorney before you speak to police, to the other side's insurer, or to any investigator about how you were driving.

2. Preserve what already exists — dashcam files, phone video, receipts that fix your route and timing. Do not edit or delete anything, and do not create a new written narrative of the event.

3. Do not post about it, and do not discuss it in text messages or with anyone other than your attorney.

4. Give your own insurer the notice your policy requires, and ask a local lawyer how to give that notice without making a statement about your own conduct.

5. Keep every document you receive — citations, letters, claim numbers, court paperwork — in one place and give copies to your attorney.

6. In any future hit-and-run, get the plate, vehicle description and direction of travel and call 911 instead of following. That is what those Vehicle Code sections contemplate.

Most lawyers offer a brief initial call at no cost, and a few minutes on your specific facts is worth more than any general guidance, including this page.

⏱ Time limits apply. On the civil side, Cal. Code Civ. Proc. § 335.1 gives two years for personal injury or wrongful death claims arising from a crash, and Cal. Code Civ. Proc. § 338(c)(1) gives three years for vehicle damage. Any criminal exposure runs on an entirely separate timetable that this page cannot address. Both depend on facts specific to you, and neither should be calculated from a general page — take them to a local attorney now.