I am someone that has rear-ended a car on the highway and unlike you would normally expect, the driver of the vehicle in front was given a ticket and their insurance paid for the repairs to my vehicle. Well, they totaled it since it was a junky car for college. I receive no blame or ticket for the accident. The situation was very similar to what Denarius outlined.
I had the car loaded up to return home for Christmas break from college. Driving on a stretch of I-135 (divided highway, two lanes in each direction), I saw a vehicle ahead preparing to enterthe highway on the on-ramp. To make room, I pulled to the inside lane to clear the outside lane for the merging traffic. I maintained the speed limit (currently 75, but I think it was 65 at the time). They entered the highway (below the minimum speed of 40 mph, never having really accelerated to full speed) and immediately pulled into the inside lane just as I was passing them. There was a paved crossover to the other side of the highway about 0.1 miles from the on ramp. This was marked with a no u-turn sign and they were planning on turing around and getting back off the highway for some reason.
I don't know any details about this accident in Palmdale, but as my experience proves, fault for the accident isn't automatically charged to the person in the rear.my accident is the only specific accident I know of like this, but I suspect there have been other occurrences. If the other driver in my accident had been driving above the minimum speed or not tried to make an illegal u-turn, I would have been charged with the accident.