Who Is at Fault When Roads Are Icy? Winter Crashes Under Ohio Law

Published January 8, 2019 · Injury Law Basics

You were stopped at the light on Far Hills Avenue, or creeping along I-75 in the right lane, when the car behind you slid on a glaze of ice and plowed into your bumper. The other driver climbed out, shrugged, and said, "I couldn't stop. It's the ice." A week later the insurance adjuster said the same thing in more polished language: the crash was weather-related, an act of nature, nobody's fault.

That is not how Ohio law works. Bad roads change how carefully people must drive. They do not erase responsibility for the driver who failed to adjust.

Two Ohio rules that do not take the winter off

Ohio has two traffic statutes that matter most in a winter crash, and both put the burden on the driver who is moving.

The "speed for conditions" and assured-clear-distance rule. R.C. 4511.21(A) says no one may drive at a speed greater than is reasonable or proper, "having due regard to the traffic, surface, and width of the street or highway and any other conditions." The same division adds that no one may drive faster than will let the driver stop "within the assured clear distance ahead." In plain English: you must be able to stop for whatever is in front of you, and the posted speed limit is a ceiling, not a target. On a snow-packed road, 45 miles an hour in a 55 zone can still be too fast.

I have explained the assured-clear-distance rule in more detail in an earlier post on rear-end collisions. In winter it does even more work, because a slick road makes the distance needed to stop much longer, and the law expects the driver to account for that.

The "reasonable control" rule. R.C. 4511.202 makes it a traffic offense to operate a motor vehicle on a street, highway, or property open to the public "without being in reasonable control" of it. A car that fishtails across the center line or spins into a ditch and then into another vehicle is, almost by definition, a car whose driver lost reasonable control.

Neither statute contains an exception for snow, sleet, or black ice. The weather is one of the "conditions" the driver is required to take into account.

The "sudden emergency" defense, and why black ice rarely qualifies

Insurance companies defending winter crashes often raise what Ohio courts call the sudden emergency doctrine. The idea is that a driver who is confronted with a genuine emergency that he did not create and could not have anticipated may be excused for not complying with a traffic law.

The defense is real, but it is narrow, and winter conditions rarely fit it. The emergency has to be truly sudden and unforeseeable, and the driver cannot have helped cause it. When it has been snowing all morning, when the radio has been warning about slick roads since dawn, and when bridges and overpasses are known to freeze first, a patch of ice is not a surprise. It is exactly the condition a reasonable driver is expected to plan for. The driver who keeps going at normal highway speed on a winter morning is usually the author of his own "emergency."

Black ice is the insurer's favorite version of this argument because it is hard to see. But "I didn't see the ice" is not the same as "no reasonable driver could have expected ice." The question is what a careful driver would have done given the temperature, the forecast, the time of day, and what was happening on the road. Those facts can be proven, and they are often worth gathering.

When both cars slide

Some winter crashes involve two drivers who both lost traction. One slid through a stop sign in Kettering; the other could not brake in time to avoid him. In those cases fault is divided.

Ohio uses a comparative-fault system under R.C. 2315.33. An injured person can still recover as long as his share of the fault is not greater than the combined fault of the people he is suing, and his damages are reduced by his own percentage. If a jury decides you were 20 percent at fault for going a little too fast and the other driver was 80 percent at fault for running the sign, you recover 80 percent of your damages. The insurer's goal is to push your percentage up; good evidence keeps it where it belongs.

Pileups on I-70 and I-75

Every winter the Miami Valley sees chain-reaction crashes on I-75 through Dayton and on I-70 near Vandalia and Huber Heights, where a sudden squall turns a moving line of traffic into a string of collisions. These are the hardest cases to untangle, and the ones where insurers most like to say "everyone was at fault."

In a pileup, each driver's conduct is judged separately. A driver who was following too closely for the conditions may be responsible for the car in front of him even though another car started the chain. Tractor-trailers, which need far more distance to stop, raise their own questions about speed and following distance. I walked through how fault is sorted in multi-vehicle crashes in last year's post on chain-reaction pileups. If a commercial truck was involved, our car and truck accident practice handles the additional evidence those cases require.

What to photograph before the plows come through

Winter evidence disappears faster than any other kind. Salt trucks and plows change the road surface within hours, snow covers tire tracks, and temperatures rise. If you are able, or if someone with you is able, capture:

• The road surface at the point of impact and for some distance behind the other car, showing whether it was clear, slushy, snow-covered, or glazed.
• Tire tracks and skid paths in the snow, which can show where the other car began to slide and how fast it was traveling.
• Whether the road had been salted or plowed, and whether other cars were managing to stop at the same spot.
• The vehicles' final resting positions before they are moved, and the damage to each.
• Weather and light conditions, including whether it was snowing at the moment of the crash.
• Names and phone numbers of witnesses, especially drivers who stopped safely nearby.

Then request the police crash report. Officers routinely note road conditions, and a report that says the road was snow-covered and the other driver was traveling at the posted limit is a strong start on a speed-for-conditions argument.

What this means for you

If another driver slid into you this winter, the ice is not his defense. Ohio law required him to drive at a speed that let him stop and to keep his car under control, whatever the weather. The insurer will try to call it nobody's fault; the facts usually say otherwise.

Do three things now. Get the crash report. Preserve every photo and video from the scene. And do not give a recorded statement to the other driver's insurer until you have talked with a lawyer, because the adjuster is looking for you to agree that "the roads were just bad." Our Dayton car accident and rear-end collision pages explain how these claims are built.