Legal Question in Traffic Law in Virginia

Re: hit in the rear.

No, not necessarily. You might say that there's a kind of rebuttable presumption that applies to these rear-end collision situations, meaning that the rear-ender is ordinarily presumed to be at fault, but such a presumption can sometimes be rebutted by a credible showing that the rear-ender was following at a reasonable distance and that the driver in front may then have braked suddenly or done something else in a negligent manner which may have made the collision with the vehicle to the rear virtually unavoidable. In such cases there's usually a shared culpability for the accident, meaning both drivers were at fault in some measure.