CACI 700, the basic standard of care instruction, is the rule a California jury uses to decide whether a driver was negligent in a car accident case. It tells jurors that every driver must use reasonable care, must keep a lookout for pedestrians, obstacles, and other vehicles, and must control the speed and movement of the vehicle. A driver who fails any of those duties is negligent under California law.1Justia. CACI No. 700 Basic Standard of Care
What the Instruction Says
The text is short on purpose. A driver must use reasonable care, watch for pedestrians, obstacles, and other vehicles, and control both speed and movement. Failure to use reasonable care while driving is negligence.1Justia. CACI No. 700 Basic Standard of Care
The three listed duties do more work than they look like they do. “Keep a lookout” means actively scanning, not just facing forward. “Control the speed” is not the same as obeying the posted limit; it also means adjusting for rain, fog, traffic, and road conditions. “Control the movement” covers lane changes, turns, merges, and any other maneuvering. A driver who stays under the speed limit but drifts into a bike lane while glancing at a phone has still broken the instruction.
What “Reasonable Care” Means Behind the Wheel
Reasonable care means the care a reasonably careful person would use driving under the same circumstances. It is an objective test. The jury does not ask what the defendant personally thought was safe or whether the defendant meant well. It asks what a hypothetical careful driver would have done facing the same road, traffic, and visibility.
That general yardstick comes from CACI 401: a person is negligent if they do something a reasonably careful person would not do, or fail to do something a reasonably careful person would do, in the same situation.2Justia. CACI No. 401 Basic Standard of Care CACI 700 takes that broad principle and names the specific duties that apply to driving.
Because the test is objective, a newly licensed teenager is held to the same standard as a veteran commuter. Inexperience is not a defense. The one real adjustment is for physical disability. Under CACI 403, a person with a physical disability is held to the care expected of a reasonably careful person with the same disability.3Justia. CACI No. 403 Standard of Care for Person With a Physical Disability A driver with a medical limitation on peripheral vision is measured against a careful driver with that same limitation, not against someone with perfect eyesight.
Negligence by Action or by Inaction
CACI 401 is explicit that negligence can come from doing something dangerous or from failing to do something safe.2Justia. CACI No. 401 Basic Standard of Care Speeding through a school zone is the obvious active version. The quieter version is the driver who sees brake lights ahead and simply does not react. Failing to brake, signal, or swerve when a careful driver would have done so carries the same legal weight as aggressive driving.
Omission cases are harder to prove because the plaintiff has to show what the driver should have done and that doing it would have prevented the injury. A typical pattern: a driver approaches an intersection with a partially blocked view and does not slow down. Nothing aggressive happens, but the failure to reduce speed when visibility was limited violates both the lookout and the speed-control duties in the instruction.1Justia. CACI No. 700 Basic Standard of Care
What the Plaintiff Still Has to Prove
CACI 700 defines the standard of care, but it does not win a case on its own. The plaintiff has to prove every element California requires for negligence. Under CACI 400, those elements are that the defendant was negligent, that the plaintiff was harmed, and that the defendant’s negligence was a substantial factor in causing that harm.4Justia. CACI No. 400 Negligence – Essential Factual Elements Courts often describe this as duty, breach, causation, and damages.
Duty is rarely fought over in car cases. California Civil Code section 1714 imposes a general obligation on everyone to use ordinary care, which clearly covers people operating vehicles on public roads.5California Legislative Information. California Code CIV 1714 – Responsibility for Willful Acts and Negligence The real battlegrounds are breach and causation. CACI 700 is the measuring stick for breach.
Causation uses the “substantial factor” test. The plaintiff does not have to show the defendant’s driving was the only cause of the crash, only that it contributed materially rather than trivially. In a chain-reaction pileup, the question is whether each driver’s conduct meaningfully contributed to the injuries.
The burden on the plaintiff is a preponderance of the evidence, which is more likely than not. That is a much lower bar than the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard in criminal court, which is why a driver can be acquitted of a traffic crime and still lose the civil case arising from the same crash.
Other 700-Series Instructions a Judge May Add
CACI 700 anchors a larger family of motor vehicle instructions. The judge picks which ones to give based on the facts.6Justia. Series 700 – Motor Vehicles and Highway Safety A rear-end at a stoplight will not bring in the DUI instruction; a drunk-driving case will get CACI 709 alongside CACI 700. A few come up often enough to be worth knowing by name:
- CACI 706 (Basic Speed Law) tells jurors that no one should drive faster than is reasonable for current conditions, no matter what the posted limit says. It matters most in weather-related crashes where the defendant was technically at or under the limit.
- CACI 709 (Driving Under the Influence) covers negligence based on Vehicle Code sections 23152 and 23153, which include DUI and DUI causing injury.
- CACI 712 (Seat Belt Defense) lets a defendant argue that the plaintiff’s failure to wear a seat belt made the injuries worse.
- CACI 724 (Negligent Entrustment) addresses liability when someone lends a vehicle to a driver they knew or should have known was unfit.
Owner Liability When Someone Else Was Driving
If the person behind the wheel was not the owner, CACI 720 and California Vehicle Code section 17150 come into play. Every vehicle owner is liable for death, injury, or property damage caused by someone operating the vehicle with the owner’s permission, express or implied.7California Legislative Information. California Vehicle Code 17150 Hand your keys to a friend who then causes a crash, and you can be on the hook even though you were nowhere near it.
The owner does not have to have done anything wrong. Liability attaches because the owner made the vehicle available. CACI 721 allows a defense when the driver went beyond the scope of the permission given, but that is a narrow opening. Courts read permissive use broadly, and a minor detour from an agreed route usually will not clear the owner.
Sudden Emergency as a Defense
A driver who caused a crash while reacting to an unexpected hazard may invoke CACI 452, the sudden emergency doctrine. The driver has to show three things: an unexpected emergency created immediate danger, the driver did not cause the emergency, and the driver acted as a reasonably careful person would have under that sudden pressure.8Justia. CACI No. 452 Sudden Emergency
The idea is to give drivers credit for split-second decisions made under genuine duress. Swerving into a parked car to avoid a child who ran into the road may count as a reasonable reaction even if the outcome was ugly. The defense collapses, though, when the driver’s own negligence created the emergency. A speeding driver who then cannot stop in time does not get to call that a sudden emergency, because the speed produced the predicament.
How Comparative Fault Changes the Payout
California uses pure comparative negligence. A plaintiff can recover even if mostly at fault. If the jury says the plaintiff was 70% responsible and the defendant 30%, the plaintiff still collects 30% of the damages. There is no cutoff, so a plaintiff found 99% at fault can still recover 1%.
When several people share blame, the jury uses CACI 406 to assign percentages to everyone involved, including the plaintiff, each defendant, and nonparties who contributed to the harm.9Justia. CACI No. 406 Apportionment of Responsibility The percentages have to add up to 100. The jury separately decides the total dollar value of the plaintiff’s damages without regard to fault, and the court then reduces that number by the plaintiff’s share.
This structure gives defendants a strong reason to look for any plaintiff conduct that can be labeled negligent, such as speed, distraction, or an unused seat belt. Plaintiffs who expect those arguments do better when they can show the defendant’s driving was the dominant cause of the harm.
Deadline to File a Vehicle Negligence Claim
California gives an injured person two years from the date of injury to file a personal injury lawsuit, including a car accident claim.10California Legislative Information. California Code of Civil Procedure 335.1 Missing it almost always ends the case no matter how strong the evidence. The clock usually starts on the day of the crash.
Some situations extend the deadline, including claims by minors and injuries that were not immediately discoverable. Relying on an exception is risky. Treat the two-year mark as a hard wall and do not wait until the final months to act.