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Auto accident reporting

Plan on desc­ri­bing your per­so­nal injury when you make a claim to your insu­rance, resul­ting from an auto acci­dent. If you are invol­ved in an auto acci­dent call 911 at once and file the requi­red acci­dent report at your ear­liest con­ve­nience. Every state has sti­pu­la­tions as to when an offi­cial report must be filed. But your own writ­ten notes will help you with the State and your auto insu­rance.  So you’ll have infor­ma­tion for your insu­rance com­pany and your par­ti­cu­lar State’s DMV requirement.

We will dis­cuss the most impor­tant things to be inc­lu­ded in a traf­fic acci­dent report.

Exchange Infor­ma­tion

Exchange insu­rance and license iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with all dri­vers invol­ved in the inci­dent. Iden­tify inju­ries to the dri­ver and other per­sons and make note of their com­plaints. Relate your inju­ries resul­ting from the acci­dent if possible.

Your Notes

The writ­ten notes by you should inc­lude the date and time of the inci­dent. Make note of the weather and road con­di­tions. In your notes, desc­ribe your per­so­nal injury such as cuts, brui­ses and pain. Relate how you feel men­tally and phy­si­cally. Record the same of your pas­sen­gers if you have any. Take notice of the plate num­ber, make, model and color of  the other vehicle(s).  Inter­views of all ser­vice per­son­nel as well as names should be recor­ded. The badge num­ber or any iden­tif­ying num­bers of police, res­cue and fire per­son­nel as well as the 911 operator’s ID num­ber should be recorded.

Sta­te­ments

Expres­sions made by you should be limi­ted and well thought out befo­rehand. If you just have to make a sta­te­ment, then make writ­ten note of what you said. Be brief and dont admit any res­pon­si­bi­lity for the acci­dent.  When the other party ver­ba­li­zes anything about the acci­dent make sure you write those down too. Sta­te­ments made by eye­wit­nes­ses will also go in your writ­ten report.

Eye­wit­nes­ses

Repor­ting the sta­te­ments of wit­nes­ses should cap­ture as much detail as pos­si­ble.  Desc­ribe the gen­der, age and race.  Relate if there may be a lan­guage issue.  Make sure you get names, phone and addres­ses of these witnesses.

Scene Desc­rip­tion

Pho­to­graphs and dia­grams of the acci­dent scene will go into your report. Retur­ning to the scene and making a bet­ter esti­mate of  dis­tan­ces and yar­da­ges can be help­ful too.

After the Accident 

Write down a day-by-day desc­rip­tion of your pain, suf­fe­ring and disa­bi­lity. These sta­te­ments, made to your per­so­nal phy­si­cian will go into your medi­cal report. The insu­rance com­pany will pull your medi­cal report. So make sure your doc­tor records all of your symptoms.

Sum­mary

Your notes are the com­po­nents of your final report. You will sub­mit your report in addi­tion to the State’s requi­re­ment. Many Sta­tes require a com­ple­ted acci­dent and insu­rance report form to be filed with the DMV. Tho­rough docu­men­ting as desc­ri­bed will ena­ble you to com­plete this requirement.

Key­words: DMV

Traf­fic

acci­dent

http://vegaspersonalinjurylawblog.com/blog/?p=15

http://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/DMV/driverid/accidentreport.shtml

http://www.dmv.ca.gov/forms/sr/sr1.pdf