Leaving the Scene of an Accident in Virginia

“Leaving the scene of an accident” is the formal name for what most people call a hit and run, and it is the wording that tends to appear on a Virginia summons. The offense is defined by two sections of the Code of Virginia — § 46.2-894 for accidents involving injury, death or attended property, and § 46.2-896 for accidents damaging only unattended property.

What leaving the scene of an accident means in Virginia

Neither section uses the phrase. What they do is impose duties on the driver of any vehicle involved in an accident, and the offense is the failure to carry them out. Driving away is the visible part; the Code is concerned with four things that should have happened first.

Under § 46.2-894, where a person is killed or injured or an attended vehicle or other attended property is damaged, the driver must:

1. Stop immediately, as close to the scene as possible without obstructing traffic.
2. Report four items forthwith — name, address, driver’s license number and vehicle registration number. The section names the recipients: the State Police or the local law-enforcement agency, the person struck and injured where that person appears capable of understanding and retaining the information, or the driver or another occupant of the vehicle collided with, or the custodian of the other damaged property.
3. Render reasonable assistance to anyone injured, including taking that person to a physician, surgeon or hospital where it is apparent that treatment is necessary or the injured person requests it.
4. Where the driver’s own injuries prevented all of that, report as soon as reasonably possible and make a reasonable effort to locate the other people involved.

Attended means someone was in or with the vehicle or property at the time. Where nothing was attended and nobody was hurt, § 46.2-896 applies instead, and its duties are different: a reasonable effort to find the owner, a note including 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.

Fault is not part of it

A point worth making early, because it surprises people who were not to blame for the collision. Both sections attach their duties to the driver of a vehicle involved in an accident. Neither asks who caused it.

A driver who was struck by someone else, and who then drives off without stopping or exchanging information, has the same duties as the driver who caused the collision. Whether either of them is liable for the damage is a civil question, answered under Virginia’s fault rules rather than under Title 46.2.

It applies in parking lots and on private roads

Section 46.2-899 is one sentence long and closes the gap most readers assume exists: the provisions of the article apply “irrespective of whether such accident occurs on the public streets or highways or on private property.”

Supermarket parking lots, apartment-complex lots, private driveways and office parks are all covered. So is a low-speed collision in a parking space where neither driver ever reached a public road.

Passengers can be charged too

The article puts a duty on the people in the car as well as on the driver. Under § 46.2-895, where the driver fails to stop and make the report § 46.2-894 requires, every person aged 16 or older in the vehicle who has knowledge of the accident must ensure that a report is made within 24 hours — to the State Police, or to the local law-enforcement agency where the accident happened in a city or town. The report must include that person’s own name and address along with whatever the driver was required to report. Section 46.2-897 imposes the same duty in the unattended-property case.

Section 46.2-900 punishes breaches of §§ 46.2-895 through 46.2-897 as a Class 6 felony where the accident caused injury or death, a Class 1 misdemeanor for property damage, and a Class 4 misdemeanor where the property struck was unattended and the damage was less than $250.

The reports are in addition to everything else

Section 46.2-898 states that the reports required by §§ 46.2-894 through 46.2-897 are in addition to other accident reports required by Title 46.2, and are to be made “irrespective of the amount of property damage involved.” There is no threshold below which the duty disappears. The article taken section by section shows how the seven sections divide the ground.

Two other reports sit alongside them. Section 46.2-371 requires the driver in any accident resulting in injury or death, or someone acting for the driver, to give immediate notice to a law-enforcement officer; a willful failure is a Class 4 misdemeanor. And § 46.2-372 allows any person involved in an accident that caused 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 prescribed form. That one is written as something a person may do.

Where a leaving the scene charge is heard

Virginia has no court called traffic court. A misdemeanor charge under these sections is brought in the General District Court of the city or county where the accident happened: § 16.1-123.1 gives that court exclusive original jurisdiction over misdemeanors and traffic infractions arising within its territory.

Which court that is follows the place of the accident, not the driver’s address. Virginia’s Judicial System publishes a directory of general district courts with each court’s address, hours and clerk’s office, and case information for a pending charge can be looked up through the Online Case Information System.

The charge is brought by the Commonwealth. The owner of a damaged car is a witness, not the complainant, and cannot withdraw it the way a civil claim can be dropped.

What follows a conviction

The criminal penalties are set out in full on the hit and run penalty page. The administrative consequence is worth stating here because it is automatic: under § 46.2-389 the DMV Commissioner must revoke a driver’s license for one year on a record of conviction of a crime punishable as a felony under the motor vehicle laws, and separately on a record of “failure to stop and disclose his identity at the scene of the accident” where the accident resulted in the death of or injury to another person.

Anyone actually facing one of these charges should have a Virginia attorney review the summons and the evidence. What the Code fixes is the duty and the class of offense; what a court does with a particular case it does not.