Hi, I am Roger Ghai and I wanted to talk today a little bit about what you should do after a minor traffic accident. Believe it or not it’s okay to move your vehicles from the scene of the actual accident, especially if it’s been like a rear-end collision or something. You want to make sure that the vehicles get out of the way of traffic so as to not impede traffic and probably cause another vehicle.
In fact, that’s contrary to probably what you think or have been told in the past, but that’s exactly what the police officer will do or ask that you do once he or she arrives at the scene of the accident. Another thing that you want to do after an accident is just to make sure that everybody is okay and see whether they actually need any first aid.
If anybody is complaining of headaches or dizziness or anything like that, you should always have him lie down until the ambulance personnel can arrive to determine whether it’s necessary for the person to be transported by ambulance. Of course, after the accident, I always call the police. A lot of times I see mistakes in that people think that they don’t need to call the police because it is a minor traffic accident. Then they later on want their property damage to get fixed.
Then all of a sudden, the other person who actually caused the accident is claiming that they never caused the accident. At least if you’ve got the police called, they can make the report. They can attribute fault to whoever caused the accident. Then you have a good document for a possible case or at least to have your property damage fixed. After you’ve been involved in an accident, another thing that you want to do or another tip that I want to give you is that you should probably go ahead and document the accident.
What I mean by that is if possible, if you’re in a physical condition and do it, go ahead and take with your iPhone or whatever device you have with you photographs of the damage to your vehicle as well as photographs of the damage to the other vehicle. Going further along that, if you do have any injuries that are immediately visible after the accident, make sure that somebody is able to take photographs of those as well.
You’ll want to exchange information with the other driver. If you think the other driver is about ready to take off after stopping at the scene of the accident, you want to make sure that you take a picture with your phone of their tag. In addition, you may want to go ahead and get their insurance information, if they will go ahead and exchange that with you at the scene of the accident. Fifth point, all right.
Furthermore, another point that you might want to do or something that you may need to do after you have been involved in one of these accidents is not necessarily to go ahead and decide that you’re going to get a lawyer right away. You do want to speak to a lawyer and describe to him or her what happened, what stage of the process you are in if you’re at the scene of the accident.
You may end up very well not hiring a lawyer over the matter, but at least the lawyer can advise as to what you should say or not say and those types of things. If you’ve been involved in one of these minor impact accidents and you have questions that you don’t know the answers to, feel free to call my office at 770-792-1000