In Missouri, you can still recover money even if you were mostly at fault. Arkansas is harsher: if you are 50% or more at fault, you get $0.

If you are 49% or less at fault, your recovery is reduced by your percentage of blame under Arkansas modified comparative fault. So if your damages are $100,000 and you are found 20% at fault, the most you can recover is $80,000. If you are 49% at fault, that drops to $51,000. At 50%, it is over.

That is the number people want, but the better question is: who is trying to pin fault on you, and with what evidence?

In Bentonville road-work crashes during construction season, the other side usually argues one of these:

• you ignored a flagger or temporary lane shift
• you were driving too fast for conditions in a work zone
• you crossed the fog line during a shoulder drop-off
• you failed to slow down in rain, hail, or low visibility

That does not automatically make them right. Fault can also land on an ARDOT contractor, a paving company, a dump truck driver, or an employer vehicle owner if the setup was unsafe, signage was missing, or equipment was blocking sight lines on roads like I-49, Highway 102, or Walton Boulevard.

And bad advice needs to be called out: your boss saying "use your own insurance" does not decide fault, and it does not erase a possible workers' comp claim if you were on the clock.

Fault is usually built from the Arkansas State Police or local crash report, photos of the work zone, skid marks, truck GPS or dash-cam footage, witness statements, and whether traffic control met ARDOT standards. If the insurer keeps repeating that you were "partly at fault," they are usually trying to push you toward that 50% bar.