What Happens If a Car Accident Was Your Fault

Yes. Your bodily injury and property damage liability coverage pays the other driver's valid claims, up to the limits on your declarations page. Frost Law Group can start with that page, because it shows what coverage stands behind you. Say you misjudge a gap while turning onto Dorchester Road and strike an oncoming pickup. The pickup driver's medical bills and repair costs become claims against your coverage.

Your insurer may pay for the pickup's repairs before anyone settles the injury questions. Section 38-77-230 says that payment is not an admission of liability by you. Nor does it show your insurer recognizing liability on any other claim from the same crash. A check for a dented fender does not decide who caused the wreck.

According to the Department of Insurance, when a court judgment or settlement tops your limits, you have to pay the difference. How that plays out depends on the policy terms and the facts, which a lawyer reads before anyone assumes the answer. Frost Law Group can also explain how South Carolina's at-fault insurance rules decide which policy answers first.

If someone sues you, send the summons and complaint to your insurer right away, as the Department of Insurance advises. Your policy probably obliges you to give prompt notice and to cooperate. Section 38-77-142(B) offers a cushion if that step slips. An insurer that already knows about the suit cannot use your failure to forward the papers, by itself, as a defense. That holds as long as you otherwise cooperate and cause the insurer no prejudice.

When a suit accuses you of careless driving, the Department of Insurance says your company must supply a defense lawyer. Although the company pays that lawyer, the Department says the lawyer's ethical duty is to you. Frost Law Group's work centers on your own injury claim, a separate matter from that defense.

The size of the claim shapes where it goes. Claims worth $7,500 or less fit within a magistrate's civil limit in Section 22-3-10. A small fender claim against you could land there. Bigger injury claims belong in the circuit court, whose civil docket is the Court of Common Pleas.

Section 15-3-530 gives the injured driver three years to file most injury claims. Section 15-3-20(B) treats a suit as started on filing only when service follows within 120 days. The injured driver's lawyer can also demand your coverage limits under Section 38-77-250. Your carrier then has 30 days to reply with a sworn statement. None of that means a suit will come, and the odds of one turn on the injuries, the evidence and the coverage.

Yes, you can still recover for your own injuries if your share of the fault is no larger than the share the other driver carries. The award then drops by your percentage. The South Carolina Supreme Court adopted that test in 1991, in Nelson v. Concrete Supply Co. So what happens if a car accident was your fault depends heavily on how much of the fault was yours. Frost Law Group handles shared fault injury claims for drivers who made a mistake but were not the only one who did.

The same math runs in both directions. Suppose a jury finds you 40% at fault and the other driver 60%. Your claim survives at 60% of your damages, and the other driver, being more at fault, recovers nothing from you. If the numbers flip, you recover nothing, and the other driver's claim against you shrinks by that driver's own 40%.

Picture a driver ticketed for failing to yield on Central Avenue while the other car came through too fast. The speed statute, Section 56-5-1520, asks more than obedience to the sign. Speed also has to fit the traffic, the weather and the hazards of that moment. A jury could find the ticketed driver partly responsible and the speeding driver more so. The split depends entirely on the proof, so no one can promise where it lands.

No, you do not need to announce who caused the crash, and you should never hide facts from the officer either. Fault often turns on details nobody knows at the scene, such as the other driver's speed or phone use. Frost Law Group also advises people on calls from the other driver's insurance company, where the same caution applies.

Describe what you saw and did, answer the officer's questions truthfully, and leave conclusions to the evidence. Anything you say at the scene may come up later through the other driver, a witness or an adjuster. Your own policy likely requires you to report the crash to your insurer and cooperate, so do that as well. If anyone is hurt, Section 56-5-1260 also requires you to notify police right away. The statute names the agency by location, starting with town police inside a municipality.