Virginia Is an At-Fault State, Not a No-Fault State

Virginia is an at-fault state. It has no no-fault motor vehicle scheme: there is no statutory arrangement under which each driver’s own insurer pays that driver’s losses regardless of who caused the collision. Responsibility follows the driver who was responsible. What the Code of Virginia does set out, in detail, is what every driver must do after a crash — and those duties do not depend on fault at all.

Is Virginia an at-fault state, or a no-fault state?

At-fault and no-fault describe how a state arranges the money after a collision, not how the police handle it.

In a no-fault state, statute requires drivers to carry benefits — usually called personal injury protection — that pay their own medical expenses and certain other losses after a crash whoever caused it, and it limits when one driver may bring a claim against another.

In an at-fault state, the loss stays with the party responsible for causing it, and a person who was injured pursues the responsible driver rather than their own policy.

Virginia’s motor vehicle code contains no no-fault benefits scheme of that kind. That is the answer to the question, and it is the same answer whether the search was “is Virginia a no fault state” or “is Virginia an at fault state.”

How fault itself is decided is not in the traffic code

This is where these pages stop, deliberately. Whether a particular driver was responsible for a particular collision is decided under Virginia’s general law of negligence, which comes from the Commonwealth’s case law rather than from Title 46.2 — and how it applies to any given crash, what a claim is worth and who may recover are questions for a Virginia attorney.

A traffic conviction is not the same thing as a finding of civil responsibility, and nothing on this site should be read as an opinion about any claim.

Contributory negligence: the rule that is not in the Code

One feature of Virginia law does more to decide who actually recovers than anything in Title 46.2, and it deserves naming even though no Code section states it.

Virginia is one of a very small number of states that still applies contributory negligence. It is a rule of the Commonwealth’s common law — made by the Supreme Court of Virginia rather than enacted as a general statute — and its effect is that a person who contributed to causing their own injury, even slightly, may be barred from recovering anything from the other driver. Most states now use some form of comparative fault instead, under which an award is reduced in proportion to each party’s share of the blame rather than extinguished.

Because the rule is case law, there is no section of the Code of Virginia to link for it, and this page does not attempt to say how it would apply to any particular collision — whether a driver’s own conduct affects a claim is precisely the sort of question a Virginia attorney answers on the facts. What a reader can take from it is that “Virginia is an at-fault state” is only half the picture. Fault here is not divided up, which makes the practical answer to who pays far less predictable than the label suggests.

The duties after a crash do not depend on fault

Here the Code is explicit, and it is worth knowing because drivers who were not at fault sometimes assume the obligations are not theirs.

Va. Code § 46.2-894 imposes its duties on “the driver of any vehicle involved in an accident” in which a person is killed or injured or attended property is damaged. The driver must stop immediately as close to the scene as possible without obstructing traffic, report his name, address, driver’s license number and vehicle registration number, and render reasonable assistance to anyone injured.

Section 46.2-896 uses the same formula for accidents damaging only unattended property: a reasonable effort to find the owner, a note with identification and contact information if the owner cannot be found, and a written report within 24 hours to the State Police or the local law-enforcement agency.

Section 46.2-371 requires the driver in any accident resulting in injury or death, or someone acting for him, to give immediate notice to a law-enforcement officer; a willful failure is a Class 4 misdemeanor.

Section 46.2-899 extends the article to accidents on private property as well as public streets and highways.

None of those sections mentions fault. A driver who was struck by someone else and then drove away without stopping has broken § 46.2-894 or § 46.2-896 exactly as the other driver would have, and can be charged with leaving the scene of an accident on that basis alone.

Is a hit and run an at-fault accident?

The two questions get run together, and they are separate.

A hit-and-run charge under § 46.2-894 or § 46.2-896 is about failing to stop, identify yourself and report — not about who caused the collision. It is possible to be charged after a collision that was entirely the other driver’s doing, because the duty attached the moment you were involved in the accident.

Civil responsibility for the damage is decided separately, on the facts of how the collision happened. A conviction for leaving the scene answers the criminal question, not the civil one.

Filing a report does not decide fault either

Section 46.2-372 allows any person involved in an accident resulting in injury, death or property damage — or where there is reason to believe a vehicle involved was uninsured — to make a written report to the DMV Commissioner on a form the Department prescribes. The section is written as a permission rather than a requirement.

Subsection B of that section is worth knowing: where an accident report filed under the article is alleged to be false or inaccurate, the Commissioner must withhold action and investigate the true circumstances of the accident, including the identity of the parties involved. A report is a statement to the Department, not an adjudication.

Virginia’s civil deadlines

Because the loss stays with the party responsible, the timing rules that matter to a claim are the civil ones. Section 8.01-243 sets the general limitation periods for a personal action:

• two years from accrual for every action for personal injuries, whatever the theory of recovery (subsection A); and
• five years from accrual for every action for injury to property (subsection B).

Those are the general rules. The section itself contains exceptions, and other statutes set different periods for particular claims and particular defendants. Whether either period applies to a specific claim, when it began to run and whether anything has affected it are questions for a Virginia attorney — this page reports what the section says and goes no further.

What this page is, and what it is not

It is a plain answer to a factual question about how Virginia is organized: an at-fault state, with no no-fault benefits scheme in its motor vehicle code, and a set of post-crash duties in Title 46.2 that apply to everyone involved regardless of blame. The related page on what Virginia law requires after a car accident sets those duties out in full.

It is not advice about a claim, an insurance policy or a settlement, and it does not attempt to say who was at fault in any collision. Those are matters for a Virginia attorney and for the insurers involved.