By Steven R. Young | Board-Certified Civil Trial Attorney | juryattorney.com
The moments immediately following a car accident are chaotic, frightening, and often physically painful. Your adrenaline is surging. You may not know how badly you’re hurt. The other driver approaches your window, already making excuses, or worse, already on their phone with their insurance company.
In almost 45 years of handling civil litigation and almost 200 trials, I can tell you with certainty: what you do in the first hour after an accident can make or break your case. Not weeks later. Not after you “see how things develop.” Right then.
Here are the three things you must do — in order.
1. Call 911 and Get a Police Report
This is non-negotiable. No matter how minor the collision appears, call 911 and request law enforcement at the scene.
Why does this matter so much? Because an official police report is the single most important contemporaneous document in any automobile accident case. It records the time, location, road conditions, witness names, and — critically — the officer’s observations about fault. If the other driver was cited, that citation is documented. If they admitted fault at the scene, there’s a chance the officer noted it.
Do not let the other driver talk you out of calling police. The most common words spoken at accident scenes are: “Let’s just handle this between ourselves.” That benefits one person — and it isn’t you. By the time you discover their insurance is lapsed, their license is suspended, or their “minor” impact cracked your vertebrae, the moment to document the scene has passed forever.
Stay at the scene until the officer releases you. Get the report number before you leave.
2. Document Everything With Your Phone — Before You Move Anything
While you are waiting for police to arrive, use your phone to photograph and video everything:
- All vehicles involved — every angle, every point of contact, every inch of damage
- The position of the vehicles before they are moved
- Skid marks, debris, and road conditions
- The intersection or stretch of road — including traffic signals, stop signs, and sight lines
- Any visible injuries on yourself or passengers
- The other driver’s license, registration, and insurance card (photograph all of it)
- Every witness present — get their names and phone numbers, and ask if they’ll give a brief recorded statement on your phone
Insurance adjusters and defense attorneys are trained to minimize accident damage. A photograph of your car taken three days later, after it has been moved and cleaned, tells a very different story than one taken in the middle of the intersection ten minutes after impact. Contemporaneous evidence is irreplaceable.
3. Seek Medical Attention Immediately — Even If You Feel Fine
Go to the emergency room or urgent care the same day. Not tomorrow. Not “if the pain gets worse.” Today.
This is the step people most often skip, and it is the one that most often destroys a personal injury claim.
Here is the hard truth: adrenaline masks pain. Whiplash, soft tissue injuries, spinal compression, and even traumatic brain injuries frequently present with little or no symptoms in the hours immediately following an accident. By the time you wake up the next morning unable to turn your head, the defense will argue that your injuries had nothing to do with the crash — because you didn’t seek treatment.
A gap in medical care is one of the most powerful weapons an insurance defense team has. Every day between the accident and your first medical visit is a day they will use against you at trial. Jurors are skeptical of plaintiffs who waited a week to see a doctor. Don’t give them that opening.
Get evaluated. Tell the treating physician exactly how the accident happened and every part of your body that was involved in the impact — even if it “doesn’t hurt that much yet.” Let the medical record do its job.
The Bottom Line
Call 911. Document everything. See a doctor today.
These three steps protect your health, preserve your evidence, and establish the foundation of any legal claim you may need to bring. Everything that happens in the weeks and months that follow will be built on what you did — or didn’t do — in that first hour.
If you or someone you love has been injured in an automobile accident in California, the time to get legal counsel is now — not after the insurance company has had weeks to build their defense.
Call my office directly at (714) 673-6500 or visit juryattorney.com/contact-us/. We’ll talk through what happened and tell you exactly where you stand.
