1-800-931-7036
As the police deal with the injuries and traffic congestion caused by an accident, those same officers try to determine what driver was at fault. The officers collect information at the scene of the accident and then write a report. Consequently, the information in that report serves as a guide, when the police investigate, and seek to determine who should be named at fault for a given collision.
Facts included in such reports
• Date and location of accident
• Number of victims sent to hospital in ambulance.
• Number of drivers involved; contact numbers for the same drivers.
The insurance companies for both drivers will be able to view the report’s information. Each will assume that what has been recorded checks out with what actually happened. Unfortunately, that is not always the case.
Why plaintiff’s lawyer must make sure that the police report contains the correct information
The police will try using the contact information to get answers to any questions that they might have. Sometimes the contact information does not check out. In that case, the driver cannot be contacted. This could cause one driver to be named entirely at fault.
For instance, suppose that one of the drivers was behind the wheel of a rented automobile. Maybe his lack of familiarity with that vehicle contributed to the other factors that caused the collision. Yet if the cops got the wrong information, concerning the driver’s contact information, or concerning the year and model of the rented vehicle, it may seem like that driver played no part in creating the circumstances that caused the collision.
The investigation by the cops might result in targeting the hit driver as the one that was at fault. Maybe that same driver had gotten too close to the lines that defined the lanes on the road. There might be no reason no reason to suspect that the person at the wheel of the other automobile did a poor job of responding to that small mistake.
If the driver of the hit vehicle hired a good lawyer, that Personal Injury Lawyer in Hamilton bought to study the information in the police report. He would have to make sure that it was correct. He would need to deal with any evidence that it contained incorrect information.
Another possibility
The police might even confuse the date. That could certainly happen if the collision took place close to midnight. At that time one day is ending and another is beginning.
Such a mistake would slow the process of determining who should be named at fault. The information reported by the cops could differ from what had been reported to the insurance company. A lawyer’s intervention could prove quite useful in such a situation.