People always get caught up in who is at fault for causing an accident. Everyone is always looking to point the finger at the responsible party, and for good reason. Beyond the normal human habit of scapegoating, the determination of fault in an accident can have lasting effects on your driving record, whether you are issued any tickets, and even what your legal liability is should someone have been injured. Within this framework, yes, you do want to establish who is “at fault” for an accident.

But this mentality can be very dangerous too, as it simultaneously seeks to absolve one party from any fault in the accident. Barring a 50/50 fault determination (usually done by insurance companies where the facts do not easily point to one person being at fault), one party is always at fault, and the other party is always completely not at fault. I reject this philosophy for 2 reasons: 1) there is always something you could have done to avoid the accident, and 2) it promotes more accidents by not holding people responsible.

You Could Always Have Done Something
In 99% of accidents, there is always something that you could have done to avoid the accident. This holds true equally for the at fault and not at fault parties. For example, imagine you have right of way going through an intersection and the crossing road has a stop sign. You toodle along aimlessly through the intersection and get sideswiped by someone who ran the stop sign. By any measure, the person that hit you is at fault. But there are things you could have done to possibly avoid the accident. You could have slowed down at the intersection to ensure that no one was going to run the stop sign and plow into you. Are you required by law to do this? Absolutely not, and few people would actually do this. But where the risk is an accident, and all the inconveniences that go along with that (dealing with your insurance company, the police/tow truck, finding a new car, getting a rental car) the benefit of ensuring that the intersection will be clear can be worth it.

Promoting More Accidents
Which brings me to my next point - because people simply blame the at fault driver, they do not drive as defensively as they could, and that leads to more accidents. Take my example above - if you drove more defensively and looked to make sure no one would run the stop sign, that accident could have been avoided. Yes, it is not your legal duty to do so, but vigilance and defensive driving will always lead to fewer accidents.

Reality
You obviously cannot take every single precaution imaginable, as then you would never actually get anywhere. But adopting the mindset that you are at fault for not avoiding an accident will help keep you out of trouble. As far as I’m concerned, the only time you absolutely cannot blame yourself is when your car is parked and you are nowhere near it. Even instances such as getting rear-ended at a stoplight can be partly blamed on you: would honking your horn have alerted the driver in time? could you have moved out of the way? Admittedly, these measures are slight, but they are nonetheless proactive steps that could have been taken.