Documenting the scene of a crash can help you later

Right after a car crash happens, you’re probably going to check yourself and other passengers in your vehicle for signs of injuries. Then you’ll possibly speak with the other driver or drivers involved. You will call for police and medical attention if necessary and then provide information to police officers so that they can assign fault and file a police report about the crash.

In order to make sure that the right person gets held accountable and the right insurance policy pays, it’s important that police officers and insurance companies have a thorough understanding of what happened.

Documenting the scene of the crash with your mobile phone before you move vehicles in order to facilitate the flow of traffic can help protect you if you need to bring an insurance claim against the other driver involved.

Capturing what the crash looks like can help demonstrate why you aren’t at fault

Once you move the vehicles after a car crash, you alter the evidence and make it harder for officers to determine exactly what happened. They will then have to listen to your claims and the claim of the other driver, who may not want to take responsibility because they don’t want to get in trouble or they worry about the costs they might incur.

Basically, you cannot assume that the other driver will tell the truth or admit their role in the collision. Having photographic evidence of the position of the vehicles will make it easier for you to validate your version of events.

How do you photograph a car crash?

It’s important to capture both details and the big picture when documenting a collision. Many people zero in on the damage to their vehicle when thinking about what they need to photograph after a motor vehicle collision. While documenting the evidence of damage to your vehicle is important, that evidence isn’t likely to change in the near future.

Take pictures of the location of both vehicles and try to get as much of the surrounding environment in these shots as possible. Photographs of the license plates of witnesses’ vehicles may help you in the future if you need to ask them for testimony.

Photographs of the entire scene, both vehicles and any injuries can also help. Some people will even start videotaping the scene of the crash and the other driver upon exiting the vehicle if they suspect that the other driver might try to get rid of evidence, like an open bottle of beer, before police arrive. The better the images and the more thorough the record, the harder it will be for a driver to lie about how they behaved.