multi-car pile-up. What to do?

[ricmom]

Virginia.
My 17 yr old daughter was involved in a 5-car pile-up on a major 4-lane highway. She was car number 5, and luckily no one was injured. The 2nd car was charged with reckless driving, following too close, and another charge (unknown to me). Due to the fact that there appeared to be no brakes applied in the front of the accident, and the speed of cars was 45mph, no one else was charged. The police said there was no way anyone could have avoided the crash. This was 5 days ago. Our car was declared a total loss, the insurance wrote us a check and the car was towed over the weekend to a recycler (the accident was Thursday). Today, the officer shows up at our door and said after speaking with his supervisor he had to charge my daughter with following too closely. They are charging everyone involved with the accident. She now has to appear in court in Dec. He did tell her to plead not guilty, that he felt it was "gray", and he still does not believe she could have avoided the accident. He apologized profusely, but that obviously is not helping us. This is her first offense, and we are unsure whether we need to hire an attorney. I have never been involved in a moving violation or serious accident, so I have no idea what to expect.

[Some Random Guy]

Be sure to have her tell the judge the policemans initial determination of no fault and then the demand from the supervisor that a ticket be issued - a supervisor that never saw the accident or any of the vehicles involved. She is being issued a ticket because it is apparently department policy to ticket any driver causing a crash (even if unavoidable)

I have seen many cases where there is evidence that a ticket was issued due to department policy instead of actual facts in the case and the judge gets annoyed and throws it out.