Personal Injury: What to do immediately following an auto accident.

Hi, this is Justin Lawrence from Lawrence and Associates, and today we’re going to talk about steps you should take as soon after an automobile accident as possible. We want to educate you about the proper things to do immediately after an automobile accident so you feel more prepared if you’re ever in one.

The first thing you want to do is call the police. This is actually a state law. You’re supposed to call the police any time an automobile accident results in either damage to the vehicles or injury to any of the people involved. If you don’t call the police, then the evidence that the police would normally look at is typically moved off of the roadway somewhere or even taken to another location entirely, and the police lose the ability to investigate the scene of the accident.

That’s especially important if the at-fault driver in the accident denies that they are at fault or gives a different version of events than you do. If that happens and the vehicles are still on the scene, there are quite a few things that police can do to investigate the accident and prove who is telling the truth. But if the vehicles have already moved to a different location or been repaired, then the police lose the ability to do all of the investigation that they would ordinarily do.

Another thing you want to do is take photos. Everyone has cameras on their cell phones now, and everyone has the ability to take a photograph at the scene. You want to take photographs of the damage to the vehicles, how close the vehicles are to one another, and where the vehicles are in the road when they stop following the collision. Sometimes the lighting won’t be good, but you still want to take the photos at the scene. You can still go back and take photos of the car at the lot where it’s towed after the accident is over.

You also want to call your insurance company. If you can call your insurance company at the scene, that is good. Otherwise, call them as soon afterward as possible. It’s part of your insurance contract that you have to cooperate with your insurance company, and that includes notifying them as soon as possible.

Sometimes people don’t want to call their insurance company because they’re afraid of their premium going up. There are certain benefits that are only available to you if you’ve notified your insurance company about the accident. If you don’t call them and notify them as soon after the accident as possible, your insurance company will have the right to deny you those benefits—even though you paid premiums for them. So make sure you call them as soon as possible.

If the at-fault driver’s insurance company calls you, do not speak to the adjuster unless you’ve spoken to an attorney first. It’s the job of the adjuster for the at-fault driver’s insurance company to try to put as much of the blame for the accident on you as possible because that allows that insurance company to get out of paying for some or all of the damages for the claim. So don’t speak to the adjuster for the other driver’s insurance company unless you’ve spoken to an attorney who can tell you what kind of questions to expect and why those questions are being asked. Many attorneys will even sit in on the call with you to make sure that nothing inappropriate is asked.

Finally, don’t ignore pain. We have a lot of clients who think they can walk off pain, but that pain winds up being a symptom of some more serious problem. If you go to urgent care, the emergency room, or your family doctor as soon as possible after the accident, they’ll have the opportunity to investigate the cause of the pain and determine whether or not it’s something related to the accident.

If the pain is something that you wind up walking off, then at worst, you’ll have some medical bills that your insurance company can pay because one of the benefits of auto insurance is that they have to pay for medical bills that are related up to a certain limit. However, if you wind up having some kind of condition related to the automobile accident that can’t be walked off, that’s going to require therapy or even surgery. You’ll have done yourself a favor by going to the doctor immediately after the accident in order to show that the pain you felt was related to the accident instead of something that came about later.

If you have any other questions about what to do after an automobile accident, go to our website at https://www.lawrencelaws.com/.