AK> I know if you are going too fast, you can hit a car and send it quite
 AK> a ways forward.  The police might take excessive speed and the size of
 AK> the car that started the chain reaction into account, but in Oklahoma,
 AK> even if you are stopped behind a car at an intersection, if you hit the
 AK> first car at the intersection because you were hit from behind by a
 AK> moving vehicle, you are still held accountable for the damages to the
 AK> first car.
Amy, I have to disagree with you, at least for Oklahoma. I've worked around
5,000 vehicle accidents and have taught traffic in Oklahoma Law Enforcement
Academies. If you have two cars stopped at a red light and a third car
strikes the rear vehicle hard enough to knock it forward into the first
vehicle, the one who started the chain reaction gets the ticket. The driver
of the middle vehicle would have no chance to avoid the accident with the
front vehicle and would not be disobeying any law. If the insurance companies
settled the accident as you suggest, they would be cheating the policy
holder. If the officer wrote a ticket to the middle vehicle, it would be
without merit and dismissed. In short, there would be no tactic available to
the middle vehicle to avoid hitting the front vehicle. Excessive speed from
the vehicle starting the chain-reaction would not be necessary, as moderately
low speeds can knock a stopped vehicle forward a considerable distance. If
this happened to you in Oklahoma, you were cheated, both by the police and
the insurance company.
Tom Rightmer - A Victims' Rights Advocate
... Reality is for those that can't handle drugs.
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