>no. The driver is responsible to keep speed and distance from previous car such that he/she can stop if necessary. And pretty much every state also has a law

>no. The driver is responsible to keep speed and distance from previous car such that he/she can stop if necessary. And pretty much every state also has a law drivers not to do things like panic stop in the highway without a reason. The rules of the road have redundant responsibility baked in almost everywhere on purpose We abridge a lot of normal rules and legal doctrine for handling civil liability when it comes to car stuff because we have to have quick rules of thumb to deal with the sheer volume of incidents. What you are arguing in favor of here is a very sloppy rule of thumb and such advocacy is likely because you have assessed yourself to be far more likely to be the source of a multi-car wreck than one of the people caught up in it. Ask yourself, if you brake checked someone and caused a chain reaction would you be morally culpable? The overwhelming majority of the population would say yes. So why should you not be financially culpable? Now ask yourself if instead of brake checking someone you were stopping because a child wandered into the road how would that change things. On what grounds do you justify using the same allocation of liability for both these situations?