If there is one thing that personal injury lawyers and the insurance industry agree on, it’s that you should always call 911 after you have been involved in a car accident. This is not simple semantics, but an essential act that not only will help maintain your safety, but also helps you to properly document and preserve your rights in the event that you have to pursue a personal injury claim, or even a lawsuit.
Below, our friends from Blaszkow Legal, PLLC discuss why calling 911 after a car, truck, or motorcycle accident is so important.
911 Calls Create A Recorded Record
When you call 911, you are immediately creating a record. All 911 calls, the country over, are recorded. So everything you say is going to be preserved, and these recordings can be obtained via FOIA (the Freedom of Information Act), or a subpoena if needed later on. The things that you say that can be very important to your case can include location of the crash, what happened, what the other person is saying, and a description of the other vehicle—especially if that vehicle flees!
After all, being involved in a car accident is traumatic, and you may not remember the license plate even 10 minutes later when the police arrive. But if you call 911, for example in a hit and run accident, you can document that information immediately.
Documenting The Crash Location
Notifying the police by calling 911 also ensures that the exact location of the crash is properly documented. When you call 911, the phone company immediately gives your GPS coordinates to the 911 call center. Did you know that? That’s not a bad thing at all, because there have been plenty of cases where the insurance company has argued that the claimant’s location of the crash was wrong, and thus could not be believed. When you call 911, you enable personal injury lawyers to obtain this information to prove the veracity of your statements.
Police Reports And Body Camera Footage
Triggering a response by the police also brings a police officer to the scene of the crash! Many police officers, whether they are state troopers, city cops, or deputy sheriffs, come equipped with body-worn cameras. The statements and actions of everyone are recorded on these devices. What a person who is at fault for an accident says is called an admission. An admission, especially an “admission against interest,” is what some lawyers refer to as “the smoking gun.” These statements can be used against the defendant and help to prove your case, so that you can win at trial. Just like the 911 recordings, these videos can often be obtained by the Freedom of Information process or subpoena.
What If Police Don’t Respond?
It is true that there are some jurisdictions that do not send the police to car accidents, based on certain local policies and procedures. Some departments won’t come out if the vehicles are off the road or if there is no one requesting emergency medical transport. Regardless of what you think your local law enforcement agency does, you should absolutely call the police. If they decline to come, so be it. Your call is still logged, the evidence is still preserved, and the case has begun. You should always protect yourself as much as possible, and call 911 in the event of a car accident.
Once police are on their way and if you are not too injured to do so, contact a motorcycle accident lawyer so that they can give you legal guidance on what to do next.