Building a Defense For Reckless Driving By Accident Charges in Virginia Beach
In defending reckless driving by accident cases, it’s really important to look at why the accident happened in the first place. The defense is going to be providing an alternate explanation for why the accident happened other than the explanation that the driver was operating his vehicle in a reckless manner. If there was another person involved in the accident then most of the time they aren’t required to come to court at all, unlike the way that they would be required in a civil case. So there’s less evidence in a criminal reckless driving case as there would be in civil accident case which makes consulting with a Virginia Beach reckless driving lawyer all the more important.
To discuss your Virginia Beach reckless driving by accident case, call and schedule a consultation today.
Legal Excuses For Being In An Accident
Sometimes it is possible that accidents just happen and nobody is at fault, the law does take this into consideration. Sometimes people are charged and there ends up not being enough proof for a conviction to come out of it. Just because the collision occurred does not mean that the driver was doing something wrong. Legal excuses have to do with the facts of the case specifically, especially if the officer didn’t witness the accident first hand.
A collision could happen because there was something on the road that caused the driver to swerve in order to avoid and the same situation likely could have happened to anybody. In that case, it’s usually not considered to be the fault of the driver. Or there could be some kind of unpredictable defect with the vehicle that caused the vehicle to not function, which led to the accident, which again would not be the fault of the driver so he wouldn’t end up with a conviction.
Is Reckless By Accident a Less Severe Type of Reckless Driving?
No, it’s still the same level of criminal offense as all of the other types of reckless driving. It doesn’t have anything to do with if anyone is hurt or not, it’s still a class one misdemeanor according to the law which is the same as reckless driving by speed.
Steps An Attorney Will Take To Build a Defense
An attorney will make sure to get all of the facts surrounding the incident and see if there is anything that can suggest or demonstrate that the driver was not guilty of driving recklessly. The only thing the officer has to go on is whatever the witnesses and drivers said as well as the fact that the accident happened at all. This is usually not strong enough to get a conviction for reckless driving by accident because it’s very hard to prove something that’s just hearsay.
An attorney can help explain the law and what exactly needs to be proven by the officer in court, so that you can work with your attorney beforehand, put together what happened and decide what the best approach would be and also to figure out what you should do to prepare for court.