Benefits To Having Police Report On Accident That Triggered Injury Claim

Although the law does not demand the availability of a police report for all on-road accidents, it usually pays to obtain one.

The law does not require a call to the police by the driver that has been involved in a car accident, except in certain situations

A driver should make such a call if someone has been injured. A driver should also make such a call if the amount of property damage were to exceed a given level. Personal Injury Lawyer in Barrie knows that any drivers that feel that the other driver was responsible for an injury-causing or property-damaging accident should not hesitate to call the police.

Tips for drivers to follow, if an officer of the law does come onto the scene

Get the officer’s name and badge number. Get the name and location of the agency within the Police Department that would receive any report from that arriving officer.

If possible, obtain the number for the officer’s report. Later, use the above information to go after a copy of the police report. Be ready to pay the required fee for that same copy.

What if a police officer does not come to the scene of an accident; then what should the driver do?

The driver should go to the nearest police station and fill out a report form.

Suppose that an examination of a copy of the officer’s report were to reveal the existence of a mistake in that same document; then what should the driver do?

The driver would have the right to write a corrected version of the original report. That correction could then be attached to the pages that carried the information that had been provided by a member of the police force.

How possession of a police report could prove beneficial?

If the insurance company were to allege that the other driver had violated the law, then it might claim that the company’s policyholder, the defendant was not the only one that was responsible for the reported accident, or for the associated injuries.

In the absence of a police report, it could be difficult to fight an allegation that has been made by the defendant’s insurance company. However, if the police report has made no mention of a citation that was given to the claimant, then the insurance company could struggle to provide a sound basis for its allegation.

If the claimant’s insurance company has questioned the veracity of the defendant’s story, then an investigator could search for the truth. That search might push the investigator to study the contents of the police report. Ideally, those contents would aid discovery of the facts, which could serve to counter the allegations that had been made by the insurance company.