Try To Document What You Can In An Accident

In most states, car insurance is something you are legally required to have if you want to drive a car in California, and for a good reason.

Without it, many people would find themselves in unexpected financial debt because of car repairs that aren’t even their fault, to begin with.  Car insurance prevents this from happening.

While we are lucky that designs have improved and cars have been getting safer over the years, that only reduces the chances of injury in an accident. It doesn’t necessarily lower the risk of accidents themselves, especially if other drivers are distracted.

If an accident happens to you, you should do a few essential things. Documenting the accident itself is one of them.

The Crucial Minutes after a car accident occurs

Much of the evidence of what happened in an accident will only be available in the first few minutes after the accident has occurred. The cars’ position, the damage to the vehicles and even eyewitness testimony will all disappear and be much harder to track down in the hours and days after the accident has been cleared out from the road.

For insurance companies, these minutes can sometimes make all the difference. Who pays for the damage in a car accident is a direct result of who is determined to have been at fault for causing the accident. Physical evidence can be critical in making this determination.

Take Photos & Video

Today, most people have a smartphone with them, and these are perfect for taking photos or even shooting video. Photos of the damage to the cars can be significant visual evidence. Once vehicles are taken towed away to be repaired, it can be challenging to remember the cars’ positioning or the angle of impact as implied by the damage.

Photos are more accurate and more honest than human recollection. They can be used by investigators to study how the accident occurred and corroborate conclusions on what actually happened.

Use A Dashboard Cam

Dashboard cameras are now a favorite accessory of many insurance companies because of how much uncertainty they can potentially remove from an accident. “dash cams,” as they are sometimes called, are video cameras that continuously record driving activity. They store the footage in a hard drive and erase it after several hours if nothing of note has occurred.

This means that in some instances, dashboard cameras are the ultimate eyewitnesses, recording in high resolution the exact moments that a car accident occurred. This can often answer questions about whether someone was driving erratically or not, whether traffic laws were being obeyed or ignored, and other crucial factors that point toward who was responsible for causing a vehicular accident. Dashboard cams are widely praised for eliminating a lot of doubt and quickly providing evidence to arrive at conclusions for an accident, and letting insurance companies rapidly move forward.

Contact us

If you’re looking for car insurance coverage for yourself, we can help. Contact Panorama Insurance Agency Inc. We can look at your driving needs and find the right insurance policy to protect you.