The last clear chance doctrine
A genuinely important exception to Virginia's contributory negligence bar is the last clear chance doctrine. If the defendant had the last clear opportunity to avoid the accident, despite the plaintiff's own prior negligence, the plaintiff's contributory negligence won't bar recovery. The idea is that a defendant who had a real, final chance to prevent the harm and failed to take it shouldn't escape liability just because the plaintiff also made an earlier mistake.
The willful and wanton negligence exception
A second genuine exception applies when the defendant's own conduct rises above ordinary carelessness to willful and wanton negligence. In that situation, the plaintiff's own ordinary negligence — or even gross negligence — generally won't bar recovery. The law treats a defendant's willful and wanton conduct as serious enough that an ordinary mistake by the plaintiff shouldn't let that defendant off the hook entirely.
A technical requirement: concurrent negligence
For contributory negligence to bar recovery in the first place, Virginia law generally requires that the plaintiff's negligence be concurrent, or contemporaneous, with the defendant's negligence. The two have to overlap in time and circumstance for the ordinary bar to apply at all.
No bright-line test, just guidance from real cases
There's no single bright-line test for exactly what counts as contributory negligence in Virginia. Instead, real court decisions provide guidance through specific factual patterns — for example, a driver failing to notice a large vehicle from a meaningful distance, or a driver abruptly braking and stopping in the middle of the road. Each case still turns on its own specific facts.
Who decides
The jury generally bears the task of deciding whether an injured plaintiff did anything that contributed to causing the accident and the resulting injury — and, where raised, whether either the last clear chance doctrine or the willful/wanton exception applies to restore that plaintiff's right to recover. See our Virginia contributory negligence calculator to see how dramatically the outcome shifts once an exception comes into play.