That might be good moral advice, but it’s terrible legal advice.
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The legal profession should always pursue the truth. I say the truth will come out in the end and if you try to deny you are at fault then you will only make a fool of yourself. Legal - smegal – I would rather be honest. The only thing we leave behind is our reputations.
Observations of many situations like this led to the saying that integrity is its own reward. I prefer honesty too, but a lot of people aren’t party to that belief.
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In an ideal world, honesty would pay off. In the real world, where people are litigious, this view of the legal profession is naïve, and this advice could do real harm to your risk profile.
I’m not saying to lie, I’m saying let the officer who fills out the report determine fault impartially, and let the insurance companies sort it out. That’s what we pay them for: to manage our risk profiles for us. Stick to the facts, and don’t offer (amateur legal) opinions.
Ask your insurance agent, and he or she will tell you that you should never admit fault, because you could be mistaken. After an accident, people are often in shock, and their perceptions can be affected by that.
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Here is advice from all the major insurance companies I can think of regarding admitting fault:
-Progressive: "Do not admit fault. Do not discuss the car accident with anyone other than the police and your claims representative."
https://www.progressive.com/vehicle-resources/car-accident-tips/
-Geico: "First, don’t reveal your policy limits or admit fault to anyone other than GEICO."
https://www.geico.com/claims/after-an-accident/
-State Farm: "Be polite, but don’t tell anyone the accident was your fault, even if you think it was."
https://www.statefarm.com/claims/resources/auto/what-to-do-after-auto-accident
-Allstate: "Do not admit fault."
https://www.allstate.com/auto-insurance/accident-tips.aspx
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Your advice is excellent an 100% correct. Thank you for saving wear and tear of my fingertips.
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Have you ever dealt with a good insurance company or one that tries to skirt it’s responsibilities? I have dealt with both. I have no respect for any insurance company or agent that tries to get out of paying for the injuries their policy holder caused. Once you witness such behavior you will want no part of such actions and will want to be as honest as possible and let the chips fall where they may. i pay for full coverage and will admit fault if I’m at fault. Then the insurance can deal with the issue. That’s why I pay for full coverage. I don’t pay for full coverage and then lie to protect any insurance company. And if you are injured you want the other driver and his insurance company to do the right thing.
The idea that I somehow recommended lying makes for an interesting straw man, but I went out of my way to point out that isn’t what I’m recommending.
This isn’t about saving the insurance company money. It’s about protecting yourself in a situation where your perspective is limited, and there might be factors that led to the accident you aren’t aware of. If the accident was actually caused by a mechanical failure in another vehicle, but you think you’re at fault when you’re not, you might be confessing culpability to an accident that wasn’t actually your fault. Do you really want to make that mistake so you can feel morally superior?
If you don’t believe me, that’s fine, but I’m not going to let your bad advice stand unchallenged. Ask your insurance agent to explain why it’s in your best interest to let an impartial party determine fault. You seem to regard your insurance agent, and the company he/she represents as a good one, worthy of your moral judgment, so ask your insurance agent whether he/she thinks admitting fault is a good idea, and ask how admitting to fault might negatively affect you. Maybe you’ll believe the information I’ve offered you if it comes from a source you trust.
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You do realize you can be sued for MORE than your insurance coverage. Your insurance will pay up to policy limits and then you’re on the hook for the rest if found liable (not too hard since you’ve already admitted responsibility). You’re not protecting the insurance company, you’re protecting YOURSELF. Think about it.
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The others are right. Telling the truth is good moral advice. Taking the entirety of the blame without being compelled to is terrible legal advice. As my attorney father used to say when asked for advice, “3 rules to follow from now on. Shut up. Shut up. And shut the @#$@ up.”
People who were just trying to be honest have found themselves unjustly in trouble for their honesty.
Just off the top of my head, if I rear end someone and then say “it’s all my fault,” I’ve just accepted 100% of the blame… Which would be a tactical error if it turns out that the guy I hit had non-working brake lights. It would be better for me to say “I rear ended him. I didn’t see his brake lights,” which is not only actually more truthful, but may also shift some of the liability off of my shoulders.
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Suggesting that someone else admit fault is a great idea if you believe that you are never at fault.
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I see we have some “Philadelphia Lawyers” who can fog up a situation. We all have a conscious and should follow it. My suggestion is to admit fault if you are at fault, period. But if I am not at fault then all the king’s men and all the king’s horses do not want to accuse me 
I have thought about it and I have also witnessed traffic court. A person can look pretty small and pretty petty when they are clearly at fault but they deny it and make stupid excuses. I could not do that and embarrass my wife, my son, and my friends.
Honest folks can collide with dishonest folks. The honest citizen jumps up and admits fault and accepts total responsibility.
The dishonest victim sees the collision as his/her lucky day. A dishonest slip & fall sleazy lawyer representing the victim claims the victim was somehow injured and disabled by what seemed a rather minor collision… and away we go…
It doesn’t take much to stress an honest citizen’s insurance coverage beyond its limits.
The poor sap that the honest person crashed into turns out to be the world’s biggest, lying, jerk that is detestable to everybody but his/her lawyer.
There is nothing dishonest about not admitting fault at an accident scene. It’s just smart.
CSA
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Was this supposed to be insulting? The term means a lawyer who knows the law inside and out.
Your suggestion sounds great, but legally speaking, it’s stupid advice and people should not follow it for exactly the reason @common_sense_answer said.
The minute you start jumping up and down in your eagerness to be 100% honest, the other guy suddenly has whiplash and a “permanently” sore back and takes you to the cleaners for pain and suffering, mental anguish, loss of income, and (this has actually happened) loss of sexual services because, so he claims, he can’t be intimate with his wife anymore.
By the time your honesty is done being paid for you’ve blown through your liability coverage and are wishing you’d gotten that umbrella policy your insurance agent tried to push on you last year because now they’re coming for your bank account, your possessions and your dog. All because you couldn’t be quiet for awhile until all the facts were sorted out.
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Who said anything about distorting facts and making excuses? You’ve got that stuck in your head and missing the point. Not incriminating yourself has nothing to do with your example above. Nevermind, carry on…
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Pat is giving bad and completely wrong advice. One can only hope no one takes it.
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You’re making a “false choice”: you’re saying one must choose to either 1) admit fault, if in an accident that they perceive as being their fault, or 2) deny fault, and attempt to “get out of” accepting blame.
When really, there’s a third option: let the professionals do their job, and don’t try to do their job FOR them. Really, this is the only correct option, whether you perceive the accident to be your fault, or the other guy’ fault. Your opinion W/R/T blame is irrelevant: they don’t let the parties involved in an accident determine blame…for some pretty damn good reasons!
Be helpful; don’t try to hide or evade…but allow the pros to do their job. By attempting to “do the cop’s job for him,” you’re actually making it HARDER for him to do a good job, and your “help” will most likely NOT be appreciated.
(The other bit of “advice” I’ve heard is “never say ‘sorry.’” This has never set well with me, because “sorry” is NOT an admission of culpability. At heart, it’s an expression of empathy: I feel sorrow about your current hardships. ONE POSSIBLE reason one might feel such empathy is because one feels they bear a certain amount of responsibility…but that’s FAR from the only reason one might feel empathy.
After all, I can say “I’m sorry Justin Bieber was ever born!”…but that doesn’t imply I’m somehow responsible for his birth, now does it?)
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Yeah, that seems to be his straw man argument and he’s sticking to it. There is nothing dishonest about sticking to the facts and not offering up your amateur’s assessment of who was at fault. If someone asked you directly who you thought was at fault, I agree the right thing to do is give an honest direct answer to a direct question, but in my opinion, the honest direct answer is, “I can’t be sure because I don’t know all the facts.” As one party involved in an accident, you don’t know how well all the other vehicles were maintained, whether they were driving on bald tires or good tires, or whether anyone involved in the accident might have been intoxicated. Those are important factors in assigning culpability.
That’s the most frustrating aspect of this whole discussion, that @patgurr, thinks he is in a position to know more about who is at fault than an impartial accident investigator who has access to more information than he does.
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