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If you have another driver run into your car and drive away without stopping, that might enrage you. If you’re a responsible person, you know you’d never do that. It’s irresponsible, reckless, and goes against how a person behaves in polite society.
The police consider hit-and-run collisions felonies, so if a driver does that, the cops will try to locate them immediately. They can arrest a driver who leaves an accident scene, and such an individual might get jail time.
You might not understand why a person would leave an accident scene. Let’s talk about some of the reasons why that may happen.
You Might Have a Young Driver Who Panics
If a driver hits your car and drives away without stopping, then often, it’s a young driver who panics at that moment. Teens cause many car accidents. They’re inexperienced drivers.
If a sixteen-year-old who just got their license hits your car, they may feel an adrenaline surge. It may make them act irresponsibly. They may feel like if they flee the scene, they won’t face any repercussions. Perhaps they don’t want their parents to find out.
You might get a glimpse of the young driver as they’re driving off and see panic on their faces. If that happens, you can probably guess why they behaved that way. If they have friends in the car telling them to press down on the gas pedal and to get out of there, the added peer pressure might play a part.
You May Have Someone Driving Without Insurance
You may also have a driver run into your vehicle and drive off because they don’t have any insurance for the car. In almost all circumstances, you need the proper insurance plan and enough coverage to legally operate a vehicle. Most states impose laws saying you must have that minimum amount.
If someone doesn’t have any insurance, or if their policy won’t cover all the damages, then they may want to drive off and take their chances. They usually know a hit-and-run constitutes a felony, but they may feel like that’s the better option than waiting and telling the cops they don’t have an active, satisfactory insurance policy.
Maybe they don’t have the money to get an adequate insurance policy, or maybe they let their old one lapse because they forgot about it. Either way, this kind of thing happens more than you might think. You never know which driver on either side of you doesn’t have insurance.
You Might Have a Drunk Driver on Your Hands
You may also have someone who hits your vehicle and then drives away because they consumed alcohol before they drove. Maybe they drank at home, or maybe they’re coming from a bar. Perhaps they’re even bar hopping.
If someone drives drunk, they often make poor decisions. The alcohol impacts their judgment. They may feel that if they drive away, it’s not likely the police will find them. The alcohol tells them that they should give it a shot.
This kind of thinking sometimes feels nice if you’ve consumed alcohol. You may drink precisely because you want to get away from responsibility. That’s particularly true if you drink excessively.
If you’re over the legal limit, you shouldn’t drive, but that doesn’t stop some people. If you see someone weaving all over the road before they hit your car, then you can probably predict they’ve consumed alcohol or some other intoxicant.
Maybe the Other Driver Consumed Some Other Kind of Drug
Maybe you have a situation where the other driver didn’t drink alcohol, but they consumed some other kind of drug. Perhaps that’s an illegal drug, like meth or coke, or a legal one, like legalized marijuana.
You can legally use nonmedical or recreational marijuana in several states now, with seemingly more joining the list with each passing year. If you smoke marijuana or consume an edible, that impacts your judgment, just like alcohol does.
If someone consumes drugs and then drives, then if they hit another car, they may feel it’s likely they can drive away without any repercussions. It’s just like drunk driving. The feeling of unreality may convince the driver that the police won’t find them and that they can just act like nothing happened.
The police can give a drunk driver a breathalyzer if they catch them. If they chase down someone who hit your car, and they’ve consumed some other drug, that often becomes more difficult to prove.
If the police catch a person who hit your car, though, and they see that driver acting erratically, they will probably guess they’ve ingested some kind of intoxicant. Such a person will face criminal charges as well as civil ones that you might bring against them if you feel hiring a lawyer makes sense.
Someone Might Hit Your Car While Running from the Cops
You might even have a scenario where another driver hits your car and then drives off because they already have the authorities on their trail. You may see such a police chase on TV from time to time. It’s like the old show Cops that used to show police pursuits.
If you’re in this situation, there’s little you can do except to get your damaged car off the road. If the other driver injured you, then you can call for an ambulance on your smartphone if you have one on you. Hopefully, a police officer will also arrive on the scene soon to see whether you’re okay.
Reckless people who simply don’t care about law and order might hit many cars or even pedestrians in the middle of their rampage. This kind of thing doesn’t happen often, but if you’re very unlucky, you might find yourself a victim.
Reckless, criminal driving behavior can cause havoc on city streets. If such a driver injures you or damages your car, you may find that hiring a lawyer and pursuing a civil case against this person makes the most sense.