Three Strikes but Not Out? Why Is Amanda Bynes Still Driving After Latest Car Calamity?

What a Girl Wants star, who's facing a DUI charge and had previous accident sent to L.A. district attorney, involved in another Valley fender-bender

The streets of Los Angeles haven't been kind to Amanda Bynes this summer.

Already facing a DUI charge from her April arrest and with the possibility of a hit-and-run charge hanging over her from an Aug. 4 fender-bender, the thud of being rear-ended had to have been the last thing Bynes wanted to feel last night.

According to authorities, she's now been involved in at least four non-injury car crashes in the past five months. Did she finally have one too many for her own legal good?

Well...no! Simple addition isn't likely to factor in here.

"Typically, when someone is rear-ended, it's not their fault," Troy Slaten, a criminal defense attorney not involved with Bynes, tells E! News. "It's the person who is doing the rear-ending that is typically at fault because there is a principal in civil law to accidents that the person who had the last chance to avoid the accident is typically at fault. That is why when someone rear-ends you, it almost always the person who is behind that is at fault because they are supposed to leave enough room to avoid the accident."

"This has absolutely nothing to do with the other cases," continues Slaten. "Except there is an evidence code section that has to do with habit and routine...if you can show a pattern of habit and routine evidence that potentially could be brought in, if someone has a habit of reckless driving."

But, he says, even if Bynes isn't the greatest driver, fault almost always lies with the person who did the rear-ending.

The other person's driving pattern "doesn't necessarily mean that it's not your fault for rear ending them," Slaten says. "If someone is driving reckless, [that's] even more reason for you to keep a larger distance."

As far as Bynes' ongoing misdemeanor DUI case—a pretrial hearing has been postponed multiple times and, today anyway, it's scheduled for Sept. 12—Slaten said that prior or subsequent accidents shouldn't factor into that one incident. (Bynes is accused of dinging a patrol car while under the influence and the complaint against her notes that she refused to submit to a sobriety test. She has maintained that she doesn't drink in general, so the cops had it wrong.)

Slaten says that a judge does, however, have the power to suspend someone's license for 30 days after he or she hears evidence of the person being a habitual traffic offender.