What You Should Know About Liability Law and Loaning Your Car

As the owner of your car, you may find yourself at fault even when you weren’t the one driving. This is known as vicarious liability. In other words, as the owner of the car, you are responsible for any wrongdoing of another person while they are driving your vehicle. With this in mind, you might want to think twice about letting someone borrow your car.

Types of Accidents and the Owner’s Liability

Some fairly common circumstances of vicariously liable include:

When the owner is aware the car is defective, but allows another driver to use the vehicle regardless.
When the owner is aware that the driver is reckless or unlicensed, but allows them to drive anyway.
When an employer requires an employee to use a car for a business reason.

Employment

When the owner of the car is also an employer, than they can be held liable for their employee’s negligence in causing an auto accident if:

The employee had been driving the owner’s car while doing something related to their job
The employee was unlicensed, reckless, or incompetent

In addition, it needs to be shown that the driver was an employee of the car owner and not simply an ‘independent contractor’. In some cases, the car owner can be vicariously liable for an accident if the car had been driven by a member of the owner’s family for reasons related to the owner’s business. You may also find a car owner vicariously liable if the driver and the owner had been members of a ‘joint venture’ or joint enterprise’ at the time of the auto accident.

Family Members

There are some cases where the parent or ‘head of the household’ can be found liable when a family member is involved in an auto accident with the owner’s car. For this reason, a parent may want to think twice about letting their child drive their car if you know they are not a safe driver.

Unlicensed, Incompetent, or Reckless Drivers

If the owner of the car loans it over to someone they know if incompetent, reckless, or unlicensed, they may find themselves liable for their actions or negligence. However, the key point here is that the owner of the car must know this before loaning the car over to them. Additionally, the owner must have given permission to use the car. Permission is typically seen as the owner clearly stating that the person may use their car, but it can sometimes be implied through the owner’s actions, such as failing to object when the driver states that they will use their car. While a driving record can be used to prove that the driver was unlicensed, incompetent, or reckless, you cannot use the record to show negligence during the time of the incident. In simpler terms, just because the driver had a record of poor behavior does not mean it has anything to do with the current incident. However, if the driver was intoxicated at the time of the loan, it can be used as evidence of recklessness or incompetence.

Defective Car

Lastly, a car owner can be vicariously liable if they had known the car was defective when they loaned it. Even if the cause of the auto accident was the driver’s own negligence, you could still be held liable for allowing them to use a defective vehicle.