Hi, I’m Roger Ghai of the Ghai law firm and I practice in the area of injury law. We do at this law firm, several accident cases during the course of the year practicing in Cobb County, Georgia here, particularly Kennesaw, and there are a few things that you should not do if you’re involved in an accident. One, the first thing that you should never do is you should never leave the scene of an accident. Even if there’s very minor property damage, you always want to get a police report. Sometimes it’s not possible, I should say, to be able to get the national police report where the other person is charged with violating the traffic laws, but you should at least get what we call a private damage report. The reason for this is that many times when you leave the scene of the accident, number one is that the person who caused this car accident, their insurance company will fight you and say that they’re not responsible for it. So you always want to go ahead and get it from that reason.
The other thing is that that’s really a felony to leave the scene of an accident without there being a report. Furthermore, you always want to get a report because a lot of times it’ll contain the most important identifying information that you need to in order to file a claim against the other driver’s insurance company. For example, you always want to take a picture of the other driver’s driver’s license, their insurance card. Take pictures if you’re able to, the tag number of the other driver and you want to take pictures of the vehicle, both peoples, not just your vehicle but their vehicle too. In addition, while you’re at the accident scene, you always want to make sure that you keep calm. You want to go over to the other driver, regardless of whether you caused the accident or they caused the accident, and you do want to make sure that you check on them for safety purposes just to make sure that they’re okay.
Many times I’ve had depositions where the at-fault party did not go over to the injured party and that’s really terrible for them because when we file a lawsuit and the jury hears this information that the at-fault party had no concern from the physical wellbeing of the other party, the jury will penalize them. The same can happen to you in case you’re in an accident, you always want to make sure that the other party is okay, remain calm, and you also, like I said before, you don’t want to ever leave the scene of an accident. You want to make sure that you get all of the information and if you have any questions about what you should do, you should call a lawyer. Because many times people when they’re involved in these car accidents, they’ll go ahead and speak to the insurance company without speaking to a lawyer first and they will say things which are not favorable to their case, not realizing that the information they’re giving to the insurance company is not favorable. And you can bet your bottom dollar that the insurance company’s going to go ahead and use every little thing they can do to devalue the value of your claim.
If you have any questions and you’ve been involved in a car accident, either on the Kennesaw, Acworth or Cobb County area or anywhere in Georgia, please call my office at (770) 792-1000.