Written by You’ve just been involved in a car accident, first and foremost you need to find out if everyone is alright and there are no injuries. After determining the well-being of those involved and addressing the needs of the injured (if any), follow these steps.
- Stay calm. This is very important for everyone involved.
- Turn on your hazard lights and place triangles/cones around the accident if you have them in your car.
- Moving the vehicles. Only do this if the accident is minor and there are no injuries. Moving to a safer section of the road will help avoid creating traffic problems and possibly another accident.
- Contact the local police department to help in providing an accurate description of how the accident/damage happened. In many car accidents people do not contact police officers for various reasons and ultimately what happens is that there is no accurate record of events leaving the car accident open to speculation and inaccuracies on both sides.
- Assess damage. This is a natural reaction and you’re likely going to assess damage as quickly as possible with or without a checklist, but keep a few things handy to help this process including pen/paper, a camera, and a cool head. Keep calm, figure out what happened and do your best to relay this to the officer that shows up.
- Exchange Information. You should always have insurance information in your vehicle, now is the time to get out that pen and paper and share this information with the other driver(s) involved in the accident. Remember, keep calm and stay at the scene until you are directed by a police officer to leave.
- Report the Car Accident to your Insurance Company. Seems like a logical step right? It is, but where there is little damage or no one was injured you may feel like you want to sidestep the insurance company so your rates don’t raise. However, this is exactly what you don’t want to do. Report this incident to your insurance company as soon as possible, as the downside to not reporting the accident will not only damage your claim (if any) but make you subject to policy cancellation if the insurance company learns of the accident through motor vehicle reports in the future.
Printing out and keeping this worksheet in your vehicle may be helpful so if you’re ever in a car accident you can pull this out (with your pen/paper/camera and insurance card) and make the process that much easier.
