Croatian courts are increasingly applying the principle of joint and several liability, with experts and sophisticated simulation programs playing a key role in establishing the collision dynamics.
Chain-reaction traffic accidents regularly attract attention and raise a host of questions about liability. Although it is widely believed that the driver who rear-ends the queue is automatically at fault for all damages, court practice in Croatia shows that things are not so straightforward. Determining fault is often a complex equation with multiple unknowns, and the solution lies in a detailed reconstruction of the event and the application of legal provisions on joint and several liability.
This issue is vividly illustrated by a ruling of the County Court in Pula in case Gž-348/2025 dated May 12, 2025. A female driver suffered damage in a five-vehicle chain-reaction collision, even though she was properly stopped at a red light. Her vehicle was first struck by a Subaru, and then a Golf collided with the Subaru, pushing it again into the plaintiff's vehicle. She thus endured two separate impacts.
When she sought compensation from the insurance company of the Subaru, her claim was rejected. The insurer argued that its policyholder was not solely liable because the damage was also caused by the Golf driver. The key question arose: Is it technically possible to delineate the exact contribution of each impact to the total damage?
The answer came from a court-appointed expert. His finding was clear:
"that it is technically impossible to precisely delineate the contribution of the subsequent impact to the extent and type of damage on each individual part of the plaintiff's vehicle."This statement was crucial for the further course of the proceedings.
Since the respective shares of the individual drivers in the total damage could not be determined, the court applied the principle of joint and several liability. Under the law, when multiple persons cause damage and their shares cannot be distinguished, they are all jointly and severally liable. In practice, this means that the injured driver can claim the entire compensation from any of the parties at fault-in this case, from the insurer of the Subaru, which struck her first.
Although it may seem that drivers who are properly stopped in a queue are in the best position, experience shows that they often have to assert their rights through the courts. Insurance companies tend to pay only for damage to the rear of the vehicle, while claims for front-end damage caused by being pushed into the vehicle ahead are frequently disputed. This is confirmed by a case from the County Court in Zagreb, Gž-3784/2019-3, where judgment was rendered on June 10, 2022.
In establishing the dynamics of a chain-reaction collision, traffic experts play a pivotal role. Their task is to reconstruct the sequence of impacts and answer questions about speed, gaps, and the possibility of avoiding the accident. In this work, advanced simulation programs have been used for decades. The Center for Forensic Testing, Research, and Expertise "Ivan Vučetić" has been applying such programs, like PC CRASH, since 2002, and courts are increasingly citing their findings in judgments.
Participants in a chain-reaction collision are often overwhelmed by questions: Could the driver have stopped in time? Was the following distance adequate? Could the driver have foreseen the danger? It is the experts who provide answers to these questions, gradually extracting concrete conclusions about liability from the equation with numerous unknowns. And the final word, as in the described cases, is usually given by the court.
