fender-bender w/ some visible damage and no injuries - do you still call the cops out?

this is a “hypothetical”, and not a “need answer fast” (knock on wood)

Suppose you are involved in a relatively minor fender-bender, where there’s visible body damage to one (or both) vehicles, but no one is significantly injured. Are you still supposed to call the cops out, or are the two of you just supposed to exchange insurance info after you clear the intersection, and then move it along?

For some reason I thought I heard that (at least in Texas), the cops wouldn’t even respond unless there was an injury. This could have been just a “friend of a friend of a friend told me” anecdote (or maybe something I simply dreamed up).

But suppose the scenario involved a situation where the other guy was definitely at fault (i.e. he changed lanes without looking), but you have no way of proving that later on, without having the cops come out and fill out a report. What’s to keep that guy from a couple days later, telling his insurance company “I don’t know what they’re talking about - he swerved into me”, and therefore opening up a whole new can of worms?

I was always told to get a police report taken for any vehicle accident. If I was certainly the at fault party and the other person didn’t mind just exchanging info and being on our way, I might consider not calling the police. I’d certainly call them if the other driver was at fault though.

Here (in Alberta), you generally don’t call the cops unless it’s more then a few thousand dollars of damage or someone is injured. You always go fill out a police report later on in the day or the next day (you’ll need it for insurance) and take lots and lots of pictures.

However, we have been screwed twice now with minor accidents that were the fault of the other party and when it came down to it, it was their word against ours, no one had taken pictures, and it was all up to the interpretation of the adjuster. In both cases, we ended up being partly at fault. In one of those cases, there was no way we had any fault in it (the other was in a parking lot, so I can understand how they came to their decision even though we weren’t moving when it happened) but the other party lied on their police report. So, from now on, we will be calling the police to protect ourselves.

Make sure you get witnesses if you do decide to not call the police.

I’ve been yelled at on this board for my answer before, but I still hold to it. I will always call the cops for an accident, even on private property. Even if no one is going to be ticketed, I still want an official report taken. It’s saved my ass in the past (in a Best Buy parking lot). Someone backed into my car. I called the cops who took a report, but didn’t issue a ticket. The other person later tried to say that I was the one who backed into him. Without the report and witness statements I would have been SOL on the $800 dent in the side of my car.

Also, a few years back one of my employees got into a fender bender in which the other person ran a stop sign, no major damage, they shook hands and walked away. A few days later she got a letter from his lawyer that he was suing her for damage to his car and some injuries. He claimed that SHE ran the stop sign. He flipped which direction the two of them had approached the intersection from. If an officer had been around to take a report, the chances of that happening would have been much lower.

see, this sort of scenario is what scares the shit out of me (and I wish I had more faith in mankind, but I’m approaching my 40’s so that’s becoming more and more difficult). This is the exact reason I asked the question in the first place - and I do like EmAnJ’s idea about taking a shitload of pictures, and then just voluntarily going down and filling out a police report (this idea would have never popped into my head).

Thanks for the feedback, you guys.

I had a similar experience. A car essentially staged an accident (stopped at a green light on a fast road at dusk downslope, where the green light could be seen from far away but the car, no lights on, could not).

I braked and swerved heroically, but I clipped their taillight at about 5–10 mph. They sued me for damages, and the CA DMV suspended my license for not reporting my insurance in an accident with more than $500 damage. (The actual damage was about $25, but the DMV wasn’t willing to take my word.) Fortunately, the police report vindicated me.

Coda: the DMV neither apologized nor revoked the suspension. They suspended the investigation on my appeal, but never closed the file. They were next to impossible to deal with, and without the police report it would have been actively impossible.

If you do just take pictures and file a report later, take pictures before the vehicles are moved, from all angles (as long as it’s safe).

But yeah, people are dishonest assholes. In the second case where it was clearly the other person’s fault, the driver was a 70-ish year old woman, so we trusted her. Then she started lying about the whole accident and screwed us over, we think in part because she’s worried about having her license taken away or her husband getting angry at her or something. Either way, an accident that should have been 100% her fault was found 50/50, and we had to fight for even that.

For those of you recommending calling the cops: You used the emergency number I’m assuming? All these stories are making me paranoid and I’m wondering which number I should use if I ever get in an accident!

No, non-emergency, unless there are injuries.

Here, the police won’t come for a a minor accident. Get all names- especially witnesses- and ensure you get the name from an identity document- not the name the driver tells you.

I used the non-emergency number when I called to report my accident. The damage was finished, nobody was hurt, the vehicles weren’t a safety hazard, and there wasn’t an actual emergency. All I cared about was that a police officer came to file a report, and I ended up waiting an hour or so. The dispatcher instructed me to move the vehicles off the road and wait for the officer, and the other driver and I had a decent chat while we waited. He was annoyed that I called the police, but he understood why. He was pulling left out of a parking lot onto a busy road, and apparently didn’t see me in the lane he wanted to occupy.

I was rear-ended a few years ago in Virginia, stopped, did all the license/registration stuff. Then my insurance company asked for a copy of the police report. I hadn’t called the police because both cars were still drivable and there was no injury, and they told me I should *always *get a police report.

However, once in Dearborn, Mich., I returned to my car in a parking lot to find the passenger side completely smashed in by a hit & run. There was a note on the windshield by a witness who got the license number. I called the police and they said that they would tell me who the car is registered to but would not otherwise get involved. They would not come to the site of the accident or write a report.

Bottom line is call, get them to come out if they will.

I would, my ex got into a fender bender and they agreed not to report hit. The lady that hit him promptly went to the police station and said, he hit her can and didn’t stop.

It was a big mess, no charges, but it took a long time for insurance to settle a minor scrape and he got dropped by his insurance company

Here’s something else interesting. Many years ago, I was at a stop light, someone to my left was attempting to make a left from one parking lot into the next one over. So, in effect, they were going to travel down the street in the wrong direction for about 10 feet and pull back into the next lot. They made their turn to wide and clipped my car. I called the cops, the dispatcher said she would send someone right over. I saw the other person in the lot, apparently waiting. I was comfortable putting my flashers on and leaving my car right where it was. After about 20 minutes the other car left. I called again, they told me the officer would be right there. When he finally showed up, he took my statement (I had their plate number) and they wound up with a ticket for a hit and run on top of anything else he received for hitting me. (The cops didn’t track him down until later the next day and he didn’t report the accident himself).

So there’s another good reason. Call the cops just to make sure the other person doesn’t call them and report you for fleeing the scene of an accident. Yes, in my case, we never made contact. But even if you did talk to the other person there’s still no reason why they couldn’t still call the cops and say you took off. Even witness who could see the two of you (but not hear what you said) may back up the story.

Every state’s DMV has different rules.

Arkansas is a $1000 and no injuries. Anything less I absolutely would not report. I’d pay to fix my car and keep it off my insurance. They’ll raise your rates if you have an accident.

http://www.dfa.arkansas.gov/offices/driverServices/Pages/FAQ's.aspx

In this state, the law requires you to report to the police any accident with damage in excess of $500. Even if it is a one car accident.

Now, if you estimated the damage at $400, but it was really $600, would you be prosecuted? Probably not. If nine vehicles were totaled and 17 people were dead and dying, could you get away with saying that the damage was only $400? Probably not.

But like others have said, if you are not at fault, then it is in your interest to get a police report to document it. If you are a fault and the other driver wants to let it go (assuming a minor accident) then go buy a lottery ticket as it is your lucky day.

Forget the legal damage minimum and listen to Joey P. He speaks truth.

If you have a police report and photos, the other party can’t cheat you as easily. If you don’t report it, what stops them from claiming that someone was injured even if they weren’t in the car at the time? What stops them from claiming their crumpled hood is your fault even though you rear-ended them? What stops them from saying you fled the scene of the accident (a felony in many places)?

Always report it, and always take lots of pictures from every angle. If your phone can’t take pictures, carry a cheap disposable camera in your car just for this eventuality.

When I got into my accident in the Best Buy lot I called the police and they did what was called a “Non-reportable accident form” which means he just takes names/numbers facts, witnesses etc but nothing gets turned into the state or the insurance company. He said he can only do this if he feels the damage is under $1000 and their are no injuries. At the time, this seemed fair enough, the accident seemed straight forward. Okay.

I went out the next day and got an estimate on my car from an auto-body place, $800. Called him up, told him it was $800. He refused to pay saying the accident was my fault since I didn’t honk when he was backing up. After I convinced him that it doesn’t matter if I honked or not, he then told me I had to get three estimates. I told him I’d call him right back and made a quick call to my insurance broker. Now armed with some knowledge I called him back and explained to him that he could either pay the $800 or I would call his insurance company. He declined. I called his insurance company. Turns out he doesn’t have insurance with them, they started an investigation as to why he telling people he (still) does.

Then I found out (from my broker) about the $1000 and/or injury to be reportable law. So I went to a dealership and got a new estimate, came in at about $1100. Reported it to the state, along with the fact that he was driving with out insurance and that he had lied about insurance. About a week later he showed up with a check in hand as long as I signed something releasing him from liability.* No big deal, I told him, but I’m going to wait 10 days for the check to clear. He grabbed the check, took it to his bank and came back 20 minutes later with cash. I signed the letter ‘he’ wrote and that was it. He must have been feeling a lot of pressure from somewhere to take care of this.
This wouldn’t have been made right without an accident report.

*The letter he wanted me to sign was something he typed up that said ‘blah blah blah when we back into each other blah blah blah’. When he went to the bank, I retyped it to say exactly the same thing but changed ‘when we backed into each other’ to ‘when you backed into me’, signed it, folded it up and handed it to him. Whether of not he ever noticed, I don’t know.

Always call the cops. Back in the early 90’s I had a person back out of a parking space right into the side of my truck. He was very nice and asked me not to call the cops because his insurance was very high and didn’t want it to go up again. I felt sorry for him and after he assured me that he would take care of the repairs to my truck I agreed not to call the police.

As you can guess, his idea of repairing my truck was to have his uncle do it in his backyard, not a repair shop. This wasn’t going to fly for my new vechicle. Of course now that I didn’t have a police report there was essentially nothing I could do. Not even take him to small claims, it would have been his word against mine. This was a very expensive lesson to learn.

You do realize that in most jurisdictions you can file a police report days, weeks or even months after an accident, right? With one of our accidents, we had a similar situation where both parties agreed to handle the accident outside of insurance, but once the other person started trying to screw us, we filed a police report about two weeks after the accident happened.