What Evidence Should I Collect After a Car Accident?
A crash takes a second and a half. Sorting out who pays for it can take a year.
You’re looking at repair bills, maybe a totaled car, and the medical costs that follow an injury you didn’t cause. What decides how that gets resolved is evidence. This includes the record of who was at fault, which tells you whose insurance carrier you’re actually filing against.
Either way, you need evidence before you get there.
Evidence is anything that helps you prove something happened. In the case of a car crash, evidence determines who was at fault. That will help you narrow the focus of your claim and ensure that you’re filing against the right insurance carrier. There is some evidence that might be out of reach for you. That is why you need to retain the services of an experienced Charleston car accident attorney to help you gather and preserve the evidence that will prove your case.
Here’s the evidence you can use to support your claim.
Photographs and Videos
Photos and videos are the most effective pieces of evidence you can collect after your car accident. Thanks to smartphones, we have access to a camera that can take dozens of photos and videos of the aftermath. It is helpful to work from a wide shot and then move in close. You want to capture the point of impact on both vehicles and the residual damage.
It is also helpful to capture the surrounding environment such as the road conditions, weather, lighting at night, and road signs.
Eyewitnesses
Eyewitnesses can provide crucial information about the accident. They can attest to how fast a car might have been traveling and from what direction. They can also provide information about how the driver reacted after the crash. The challenge with an eyewitness is that their memory fades. They might also be reluctant to come forward.
What is important is to get their contact information at the scene. Later on, your attorney can reach out to the witness and get a written statement on the record. They might not ever have to appear in a courtroom, but their account can go a long way toward bolstering your claim.
Police Reports
Typically, the police won’t respond to the scene of a car accident unless there are injuries, significant damage, or severe traffic violations such as an intoxicated driver. West Virginia also puts part of this on you. Under state law, a driver involved in a crash causing injury, death, or apparent property damage of $1000 or more has to notify law enforcement immediately. This could be local police inside a municipality, the county sheriff, or the nearest State Police office.
When the police do show up, they are obligated to generate a crash report. They will interview all parties involved in the accident and provide an account based on their observations. They weren’t a witness, but their report can be a strong foundation for building your claim.
You can request a crash report from the West Virginia State Police. Your attorney can use the findings in that report to expand the scope of the crash investigation, which can ultimately lead to collecting even more relevant information.
Surveillance Footage
In addition to the videos and photos you take on your cell phone, there could be surveillance footage of the accident available from a variety of sources. Start with nearby businesses, such as gas stations, convenience stores, and restaurants. Parking lots often run cameras that catch the roadway. Residential doorbell cameras can help too. Traffic cameras are worth checking, though many stream live without saving footage.
The problem with this type of evidence is that it often gets deleted. Surveillance footage is overwritten to make room for new footage. That is why you have to act fast to preserve that evidence. Your attorney can send out a spoliation letter that creates consequences for the destruction of footage until you’re able to obtain a copy.
Vehicle Records
Most new models of cars come equipped with an Event Data Recorder (EDR). Typically, the EDR will activate when there is a sudden deceleration or a collision that would deploy the airbags. This preserves data from a few seconds before and after the crash. It can help to determine the speed of the vehicle. This is especially relevant in accidents involving trucks.
The EDR is mandatory in most, but not all commercial vehicles. Heavier trucks instead carry an engine control module that logs speed, braking, and throttle, plus an electronic logging device to track the driver’s hours behind the wheel. Accessing that information will mean contacting the trucking company that owns the rig and making sure they don’t delete the data. This is another task your attorney can handle from start to finish.
Medical Records and Bills
Not only do you need physical evidence that details the actual accident, but you also need evidence that speaks to your damages. These include all your medical records related to your injury diagnosis and treatment plans. Along with that, there would be the bills that add up to all your out-of-pocket expenses.
Vehicle Damage
You’ll also want to present evidence of your car damage. These can be bills for repairs or an estimate for replacement costs if the car was declared a total loss.
Proof of Income
Lost wages have to be documented like anything else. That means pay stubs from before and after the crash, W-2s or tax returns, and a letter from your employer confirming the days you missed and your rate of pay. If you’re self-employed, invoices, 1099s, and prior years’ returns do the same work.
You also need testimony from your doctor that establishes when you’ve reached Maximum Medical Improvement (MMI). This is the point where your injuries have stabilized, and you’re not expected to significantly improve with further medical care. Your MMI can either clear you for work or determine if you have a disability preventing you from working. Those have to be considered when asking for compensation for lost wages or future earning capacity.
Why Professional Legal Review of Evidence Is Vital
Once you have all the relevant evidence that supports your claim, it needs to be constructed into a narrative that explains how the accident happened. The attorneys at Hendrickson & Long, PLLC understand the importance of evidence and how it can be the “make or break” for a car accident claim.
If you’ve been involved in a car accident, you need to act fast to preserve that evidence. Call to schedule a free consultation with our legal team. You can show the evidence you have, and we can talk about filling in the gaps. Don’t wait to get the process started.
