ALWAYS call police for a traffic accident?

In My Humble Opinion
21

When I was 17, I had my first (and only!) accident. I was picking up a friend at a car repair place in a part of town I wasn’t terribly familiar with, and, concentrating on finding the place I needed to pick her up at, I crawled along at about 15 mph. However, I failed to see a stop sign, and so sailed through an intersection at 15mph. I got tagged in my back end by a woman who had the right of way.

Damage to my car: negligible-to-none. Just a scuff. The rear bumper might be a 1/4" out of alignment, but you couldn’t really make me swear that it wasn’t there before the accident.

Damage to her car: There’s a small dent in her hood; it looks like someone hit it with a small hammer once or twice.

She immediately says, “oh, you don’t have to worry about it, we don’t have to call the police!” However, I insisted.

See, we were in front of the police station. We’d already had someone offer to help us. So I said–in my somewhat naive teenage way–that, no, we had to report the accident, and took us inside the station to do it. Of course, the reason she didn’t want to report the accident quickly became clear: her driver’s license had expired ten years ago, and she didn’t have insurance. Whoops.

Then, a few months later, she tried to sue my insurance company for damages due to injury (I was assigned primary-but-not-complete fault, on the basis of, yeah, I ran the stop sign, but I was going 15 mph). However, on the basis of the police report (my account stated that she didn’t want to call the police in the first place, and that we were walking about immediately afterwards) and the pictures, it was quickly dropped.

Of course, I got a ticket for running that stop sign, and I guess I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t reported the accident. I suppose if it happened now, though, I still would; were I sued unfairly, I’d rather have the documentation. But I still feel sort of bad about it, even after all that.

22

I learned this lesson recently. As documented in a recent thread of mine, I hit a guy when he pull in front of me into a lane that I (debatedly) had the right of way in. Since it was a pretty minor collision, we both moved the cars off the road before talking. But I found out that he claimed to the police that I was traveling on the wrong side of the road and he was just making a left turn. A couple quick photos of the cars’ positions in the road would have laid that to rest pretty quickly.

23

I once was hit by a car, called the police, only to have the woman who hit me (and my wife) call me a racist. It was especially nice when her husband called me @ home and called me a racist as well. Good times.

24

Watch out for hearsay problems with police reports in court.

25

Muppets seem all sweet and innocent, but when you meet them in the real world, they can be a little testy. :cool:

26

Well, your wife would know. I’ll take her word for it.

:wink:

27

I hit a car once-I was slowing for a red light, and my car slid on some wet leaves and hit him from behind at about 2 mph. Not a scratch on either car. He got out, and begged me not to call the police because he just got back from a trip to Israel and he didn’t have his license with him. He said he was fine.

I called him that night to get his insurance information; his wife answered the phone and said he had gone to the hospital because his neck hurt.

Long story short, about 2 years later I was served with a lawsuit for $318,000. He threw in the whole shebang - “violently thrown about the vehicle,” “loss of consortium,” and other wonderful goodies.

Luckily, the guy was a slime, as was his lawyer. He ended up settling with my insurance company the day before the trial would have started for all of $2,000.

28

:confused:

29

I had a minor accident back in the 80s, no damage, and the police refused to come out. So I went over to the station and insisted they take down, my name, address and the info of the other guy and let me say “No damages done to either party and I did not leave the scene.” Then they gave me a copy.

I just did it for my own peace of mind, but the cops didn’t seem happy I was wasting their time.

30

JohnT: It didn’t mean anything - just a silly attempt at humor.

31

Always call the cops. And take pictures of both cars and everyone in both cars. And the surroundings.

32

Jeez. Reading this thread makes me realize just how lucky I’ve been with the few fender benders I’ve had. I dinged the fender of a flashy red sports car once. You’d think that would be a death sentence. Never heard from the guy again after giving him my phone number.

33

This is a little off topic but I present it as an example of a situation where you can be at fault for the accident but win on the moving violation.

I ran a stop sign and hit the rear fender of a light truck. Virtually no damage to the truck, but my little honda looked like it had kissed a tree. Got a ticket for running the stop sign.

Went back and saw there was branch in the way of the sign but your eyes had to be at exactly the right height for it to block your view. If your head was 4 or 5" higher or lower, you would be able to see it. It was this long rogue branch from a tree at least 10-15 ft away.

I call public works and told them about it. They cut the branch. When I went to court, the cop understood what had happened and didn’t oppose my not guilty plea.

The insurance co. found me at fault on the logic that I should have seen the other stop sign - the one on the other side of the road facing in the opposite direction. Completely bogus but I guess they had to lay the blame on someone.