|
Witness to Your Car
Collision
You have just been involved in a car accident where you are
not at fault and you are stunned. It is hard to know what took place because it
all happened so fast. Then your luck changes because a witness to the accident
approaches and can tell you exactly what took place.
A witness
to an accident can be very beneficial to you when you go after the other
person’s insurance company for your damages. Once you have made your claim the
adjuster assigned to your case will want to get the facts of what happened.
Normally this comes from you and the other driver.
Each driver is likely to have a different point of view of what happened. The
police report
can only state what the officer saw of the
aftermath at the accident scene. It can sometimes be hard to determine exactly
what took place from the report or officer’s notes. The next option for an
account of the incident is from any witness that stopped and gave their
information.
Unfortunately, it seems that people these days are too busy to stop when legally
they should if they have seen an accident. People tend to tell themselves they
would not make a good witness or they were not paying enough attention to give a
detailed description of the occurrence. So when a person does stop it is your
good fortune.
Now that the person has stopped and checked to make sure you are okay what is
the next step?
Ask directly if the person saw the whole accident
or just the aftermath. Hopefully they will say they saw the whole thing. Find
out exactly where they were at when the accident happened. This will allow you
to take pictures from their viewpoint.
Taking photos from the witness’s vantage point is important. This should help
your claim by giving photographical evidence of where the witness viewed the
incident. This way the insurance adjuster can not come back later saying the
witness account should be disregarded because they could not see where the
collision occurred at.
Next find out if the witness is willing to give you their personal information.
The person will usually agree to do so since they have already stopped and
offered themselves up to help. You need to get the person’s name, telephone
number, address and any other pertinent information so that you, the police or
the insurance companies can reach them in the days to come.
Hopefully the witness will have time to wait around for the police to show up
and take their statement for the
official police report.
If it is taking a long time for the police to arrive the person might need to
leave. If this is the case thank the person for stopping and waiting. Say you
understand they have to leave but ask them to write down a witness statement
before they go.
The witness statement should include the person’s personal information again
plus a detailed account of what they saw happen. Make sure if they saw that the
other person was at fault that to plainly state that. The witness should then
sign and date the statement at the bottom. If there are multiple pages it is
smart to have each page initialed or signed by the witness. You then can either
keep this account or more likely the police officer will want to keep it or at
least take notes from it for their report.
If the police officer takes the statement from you
ask for a copy
of it to go in with the police report so that you can
get a duplicate of it later for your own files. If the person can wait around
for the police you might still request a written statement so that if the
officer does not type up a detailed report you have the information.
You should ask the witness to write down an account for themselves to take home
with them. Right after the accident occurred it is fresh in their mind. When the
insurance adjuster calls them a few days later a witness may have already
forgotten what exactly they saw. If they have their own notes about what they
viewed they are more likely to read over them and give a better, helpful
statement.
If you have just been crashed into by another vehicle one of the best things
that can happen to you is a witness appearing. This witness can not only clear
up what happened for you but also for the insurance company. Any help you can
get convincing the insurance adjuster of what actually occurred is true good
fortune.
Disclaimer: This article is for information purposes. It should not be
interpreted as a recommendation to buy or sell any insurance product, or to
provide financial or legal advice. This information is provided for information
purposes only.
^Top
    |
