Under Nevada tort law, a motor vehicle accident is an unintended collision involving one or more vehicles on a public roadway that results in property damage, bodily injury, or death. These incidents are typically caused by a direct breach of a motorist's legal duty of care.

Establishing the precise cause of the crash is required to prove negligence and secure financial compensation under Nevada's fault-based insurance framework. Identifying the at-fault party’s specific operational failure is essential to validating your personal injury claim.

This blog outlines the top causes of car accidents, such as driver errors, traffic offenses, and mechanical failures. We will explore the dangers of distracted driving, aggressive driving, environmental causes, how these factors affect liability, and how to create a strong injury case.

Primary Driver Errors Leading to Collisions

Human error is the leading cause of motor vehicle accidents in Nevada. When another driver fails to fulfill their legal responsibilities by failing to act with reasonable care or driving recklessly, they put your life at risk.

Below are the most common behavior errors and traffic offenses that cause motor vehicle collisions:

Distracted Driving and Inattention

When driving a motor vehicle, you are required to concentrate at all times. Distracted driving is when you take your attention off the main job of driving your car safely. It simply means taking your eyes off the road, your hands off the wheel, or your mind off the act of driving.

Talking on a cell phone while driving is the combination of all three types of distraction and can be extremely dangerous. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), looking at a text message for just five seconds at highway speeds means you have driven the length of a football field entirely blind.

Under NRS 484B.165, it is illegal to type, send, or read data on a handheld device while driving. Drivers should use a hands-free accessory to communicate, as the law does not ban cell phone use if hands-free technology is employed.

Common distracted driving habits that directly cause deadly accidents include:

  • Using a cell phone or reading messages on a cell phone while driving
  • Having emotional discussions with passengers while driving
  • Eating while driving through heavy traffic
  • Applying makeup while driving

Driving Under the Influence of Alcohol and Drugs (DUI)

Alcohol and illegal drugs severely impair the physical and mental abilities required to drive safely. When you share the road with a driver who is operating a vehicle while intoxicated, your chances of being involved in a road accident and sustaining serious bodily injuries are significantly higher. Alcohol is a depressant of the central nervous system. Alcohol makes you react more slowly, greatly reduces motor coordination, and affects your vision.

In addition, intoxication significantly disrupts a driver's ability to correctly estimate distances, vehicle speed, and the speed of oncoming traffic. Under Nevada Revised Statutes (NRS) 484C.110, it is unlawful to drive with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.08% or higher, or while impaired by a controlled substance. While the statute establishes this strict legal mandate, practically speaking, impairment can start long before a driver hits that limit. Violating this statute is a serious failure of the standard of care expected on public roads.

Along with alcohol-related collisions, the number of collisions involving drug use has increased significantly in recent years. This includes illegal narcotics, prescription painkillers, and even over-the-counter (OTC) allergy pills that make you drowsy. If the collision involves an impaired driver, there are legal issues beyond those of negligent driving. If the at-fault party intentionally ignored public safety, you can seek punitive damages in civil court under NRS 42.010.

Speeding and Driving Too Fast for Conditions

Going over the posted speed limit makes crashes significantly more violent and deadly. High-speed driving requires a lot more stopping distance. Therefore, when you are driving too fast, you cannot stop or handle the car well in an emergency.

For example, when the car in front comes to a sudden stop and you are following closely behind at high speeds, it reduces your chance of avoiding a rear-end collision. High-speed crashes cause more damage to your vehicle and severe injuries to your body.

Furthermore, under Nevada's Basic Speed Rule (NRS 484B.600), it is unlawful to drive at a rate of speed greater than is reasonable or proper, having due regard for weather and highway conditions. This legal mandate means you can face severe consequences for driving too fast in adverse weather, even if you are below the posted limit. For example, safely navigating through a heavy desert downpour requires significantly reduced speeds to comply with the statute.

Common hazards directly related to excessive vehicle speeds are:

  • Increased impact force, causing physical injury
  • Limited effectiveness of vehicle seat belt systems
  • There is a greater likelihood of vehicles rolling over when turning
  • Failure to safely negotiate sharp highway exit ramps
  • Stopping distances are now longer than ever, so it is impossible to avoid sudden changes in the road

Drowsy Driving and Driver Fatigue

Driving after extended periods without sleep is dangerous and can be just as dangerous as driving while drunk. Driver fatigue significantly impairs your cognitive processing, reduces your situational awareness, and affects your body's reflexes.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), after 17 hours of being awake, your driving impairment is equivalent to a blood alcohol level of 0.05%. 24 hours of sleep deprivation is enough to get past the limit for driving while intoxicated, equating to a blood alcohol concentration of 0.10%.

Fatigued driving is a common cause of serious crashes. When a driver is tired, they are likely to fall asleep at the wheel, resulting in a high-speed crash without any braking or evasive action. The danger of meeting a tired driver is greatly increased in areas where there is significant tourism and a long-running hospitality sector, like in Nevada.

Shift workers returning home from long nights on the job, commercial truck drivers pushing past federal hours-of-service limits, and tourists taking long road trips all help to fuel this perilous trend. The physical evidence at a crash scene can often make a clear statement when studying driver fatigue. If there are no skid marks on the asphalt, it indicates that the driver was not aware of what was happening and was drifting into oncoming traffic. The ideal way to determine driver fatigue is by reviewing employment records and electronic logging device data.

Reckless and Aggressive Driving

Under NRS 484B.653, reckless driving is legally defined as driving a vehicle in willful or wanton disregard of the safety of oneself or others or property. Aggressive driving significantly elevates the risk of severe collisions and frequently escalates into road rage. When aggressive drivers prioritize their immediate convenience over public safety, they create an environment highly susceptible to devastating crashes.

In a reckless driving case, proving fault requires evidence of actions that clearly demonstrate a conscious and willful disregard for the safety of others. Traffic surveillance camera footage, dash camera footage, and independent witness testimony are key pieces of evidence. An aggressive driver willfully disregards the rules and forces you to take unsafe evasive actions. These volatile conditions often lead to several vehicles colliding in a "pileup" on busy highways.

Common reckless driving habits that lead to serious accidents are:

  • Driving without signaling from one lane to another or back and forth between lanes of traffic
  • Tailgating without a reason to intimidate or harass the driver in front
  • Stopping a vehicle suddenly to retaliate against other vehicles
  • Overtaking slower traffic on the right side of the road or in the right lane
  • Aggressively accelerating to prevent another vehicle from safely merging in front

Environmental and Road-Related Causes

While driver error causes most crashes, poor infrastructure and severe weather also create extreme hazards. When local governments fail to maintain roads or motorists fail to adjust to bad weather, catastrophic accidents happen.

Adverse Weather Conditions in Nevada

Nevada has a desert climate, but the weather is quite different from other parts of the country and can create serious driving conditions. While snow and ice may seem to make driving safer, weather events in the desert can cause hazardous driving conditions.

Because it rarely rains in the desert, motor oil and engine fluids build up on the asphalt over time. When rain finally falls, this oil mixes with the water to create a slick, hazardous surface. This oily mixture dramatically decreases tire traction and is similar to the extreme dangers of driving on hard black ice.

Unless you slow your speed in these sudden desert downpours, your vehicle will most likely hydroplane. Hydroplaning is the buildup of water between your tires and the road, causing complete loss of steering and braking. The desert climate often generates dangerous rainstorms and high-wind dust storms that blow across the highways. During these weather events, your visibility can rapidly drop to zero.

Sun glare in the morning and evening hours also reduces your ability to see clearly, so you will need to slow down and drive safely.

Poor Road Maintenance and Construction Zones

Safe roadways are the domain of local municipalities, state transportation departments, and private contracting companies. When local governments and private contractors fail to fix broken roads or secure construction zones, they create serious hazards for you. The road surface is expected to be reasonably safe for high-speed driving. Living in a fast-growing city implies you are always finding yourself in the path of lane changes, unexpected traffic, and lots of heavy equipment.

An improperly secured construction site creates immediate road chaos and drastically increases the likelihood of a collision. Determining the liability for a crash resulting from bad road maintenance is a complicated legal process. It will be necessary to establish that the responsible government body was aware of the hazardous condition but did not take steps to address it in a timely fashion. Furthermore, under NRS 41.036, there are strict administrative procedures and deadlines you must follow when filing a tort claim against a government agency.

The most prevalent infrastructure problems that directly cause motor vehicle crashes are:

  • Unfilled potholes are large and are leading to immediate tire blowouts or rim damage
  • Confused, faded, or missing lane markings on multi-lane highways
  • Lack of traffic signals, missing or broken traffic signals, and critical stop signs
  • Construction equipment that is not secured and is encroaching on active travel lanes
  • Furthermore, improperly marked detour routes frequently cause drivers to cross into opposing traffic flows

Vehicle-Related Causes and Equipment Failures

Cars are complicated machines and should be well-maintained to run safely at high speeds. If vital parts of the vehicle suddenly fail, the driver loses control of the vehicle right away. Typically, those mechanical problems occur because the owner neglected to perform routine maintenance or a faulty vehicle was produced by the manufacturer.

Mechanical Failures and Lack of Maintenance

When you own a car, you have a strict legal duty to keep it properly maintained and safe to drive. Routine car maintenance is necessary, or you risk putting the safety of all other drivers on the highway at risk. Often, mechanical issues occur without warning and suddenly make a once-routine trip an emergency.

Two parts of a car's safety system are most important:

  1. The braking system
  2. The tires

Driving with completely bald tires greatly raises the risk of a catastrophic blowout at high speed. The car suddenly swerves, crossing lanes and often rolling over or causing a serious side impact collision. Likewise, if you neglect to replace worn-out brake pads or change brake fluid, you cannot stop your car in time at an intersection to avoid a collision. The legal doctrine of negligence fully extends to vehicle maintenance.

When a motorist causes an accident due to worn brakes that finally give in, they are responsible for the damages. An unpredictable emergency cannot be claimed to have been caused by a mechanical failure if it was easily discoverable by a simple inspection by mechanics.

Automotive Design and Manufacturing Defects

In some cases, a driver performs all the maneuvers correctly, follows all traffic rules, and takes care of their vehicle, and still ends up in a devastating crash. In such complicated cases, the root cause is usually a defect in the vehicle's design or a manufacturing error. A fault on an assembly line by an automaker can introduce systemic defects into thousands of vehicles operating on public roads.

If your car's steering column suddenly becomes locked while you are driving down a crowded interstate curve, you may not be able to do anything to avoid a collision. Product liability laws apply to the case of defective parts in an automobile. A product liability lawsuit is not like the average negligent driving case against another motorist. It is aimed at the multinational companies that designed, built, or sold the unsafe vehicle.

These cases require careful engineering evaluation, a comprehensive accident investigation, and a thorough knowledge of federal motor vehicle safety laws. If a defective accelerator pedal sticks to the floorboards and/or an airbag deploys with too much shrapnel, the manufacturer may be held strictly liable for the resulting trauma.

To be successful in a manufacturer's case, you will need to prove that the particular automotive part was unreasonably defective when it left the manufacturing plant, causing a serious auto accident.

Specific Driving Maneuvers That Cause Crashes

Safe driving requires keen concentration, timing, and an appreciation of traffic rules. These are the most common driving errors that cause accidents. The next sections discuss the most hazardous common driving behaviors that may cause a serious collision.

Tailgating and Following Too Closely

Rear-end collisions are the most common type of automobile accident in the country, accounting for nearly 29% of all traffic crashes according to NHTSA data. Drivers can easily prevent these collisions by maintaining a safe and reasonable following distance.

Tailgating the car ahead of you is a conscious choice to sacrifice the important physical space required to make a quick stop. Pedestrians crossing the road, unexpected debris, or changing traffic signals cause traffic patterns to change frequently without warning. A tailgating driver simply does not have enough reaction time and stopping distance if the lead driver applies their brakes firmly.

Under NRS 484B.127, a driver is legally mandated not to follow another vehicle more closely than is "reasonable and prudent, based on speed, traffic, and highway conditions, and is solely at fault in a rear-end collision. This presumption of fault can be rebutted with evidence of the lead driver's comparative negligence, such as making an abrupt and unsafe lane change, stopping suddenly without a valid reason, or operating a vehicle with broken brake lights.

In low-speed collisions, the occupant's head snaps violently back and forth when the car is hit from behind. This snapping can be very violent and can result in severe whiplash by tearing the ligaments in your neck. To protect yourself, always maintain at least a three-second following distance. Snapping is a condition characterized by the severe straining, spraining, or tearing of the soft tissues and ligaments in your cervical spine.

Unsafe Lane Changing and Blind Spot Accidents

Drivers need to coordinate and communicate accurately on multi-lane highways and on sprawling city streets. Often, sideswipe accidents happen when drivers make unsafe lane changes and fail to consider what is happening around them.

All cars, no matter how big, have blind spots that the rearview and side mirrors do not cover completely. You can be in danger of colliding head-on with the side of a car that has not noticed you if you try to change lanes without physically looking over your shoulder. Mechanical turn signals are an important means of communication on the roadway.

Without using your turn signal before you change lanes, you are robbing other drivers of the chance to adjust their speed and/or position to avoid you. Impatient drivers can sometimes try to weave through a lot of traffic, crossing lanes of cars from the far left to get to an exit ramp, which can lead to unsafe lane changes.

A high-speed side impact collision can quickly cause the victim's car to roll out of control. This loss of vehicular stability often sets off a series of secondary impacts with concrete barriers.

Running Red Lights and Stop Signs at Intersections

Intersections are dangerous because multiple lanes of cross-traffic converge in a single space. These dedicated areas are always a source of many lanes of cross traffic converging into one common area. As you near an intersection, you must completely trust the other drivers around you to follow traffic control signals.

When motorists willfully run a red light or roll through a stop sign, they create the conditions for a side-impact car accident. They are also referred to as T-bone collisions, and they typically cause serious physical damage to the people involved in the accident. The side doors have little structure compared to the front and rear sections of a passenger car, which have deep energy-absorbing crumple zones.

Because side doors offer limited structural protection, you are highly vulnerable to the direct force of an impact when you are struck by an oncoming vehicle traveling at high speed. Frequently, occupants on the side of the car that was hit sustained debilitating injuries to their cervical spines, severe pelvic fractures, and traumatic brain injuries.

Determining fault in an intersection accident often requires surveillance video from nearby businesses or the review of data from red light cameras. Consequently, thoroughly scanning an intersection before entering is a critical safety measure.

Call a Las Vegas Car Accident Attorney Near Me

When you are injured in a motor vehicle accident due to another driver's negligence, you might face mounting medical expenses, lost wages, and physical pain. Whether your crash was caused by driver fatigue, aggressive tailgating, or a defective automotive part, pinpointing the exact cause is the foundation of proving liability. Taking prompt action helps preserve important evidence, determine liability, and protect your rights to the highest possible compensation before Nevada's two-year statute of limitations expires.

You do not have to battle with aggressive insurance companies by yourself. Dallas Horton & Associates handles all aspects of personal injury and auto collision cases. Our committed legal team conducts a comprehensive investigation of the leading causes of car accidents, negotiates with insurance adjusters, and advocates for our clients in the Las Vegas area. Contact us at 702-820-5917 to secure the fierce advocacy you need to focus entirely on your own financial recovery after a severe, traumatizing car accident.