Essential Steps to Take After a Car Accident in Oklahoma
Essential Steps to Take After a Car Accident
You hear the sound of squealing tires, you look at your side view mirror, you look at your rear view mirror, suddenly you see a truck coming up behind you way too fast and you know you’re going to get hit. You try to brace yourself with the steering wheel or you try to strengthen your position so you won’t be pushed around and do a coup counter coup or what they call a whiplash type injury, but you get smacked. What do you do?
Well, I’m Tulsa personal injury lawyer Mike Ashworth and I want to tell you that in my years as a district attorney, in my years in private practice of nearly 40 between the two, the number of times, I started out as a traffic DA, and the number of times I’ve seen accident report and accident report and accident report and accident report that never list eyewitnesses and where no one took any pictures, especially in this era of smartphones, shocks me.
The Importance of Eyewitnesses and Pictures
I mean we deal with dozens and dozens and dozens of cases involving automobile accidents and rare, extremely rare, is that we get pictures from the scene despite the fact that everybody is married to those smartphones, probably because of the adrenaline. So let’s talk a little bit today about a checklist of what to do if you get smacked from behind or you get hit or anything happens.
First, make sure you’re okay. Check yourself out, make sure you’re okay. Do you feel any sharp pains, tense pains, do you need medical attention immediately? Are you bleeding? Did you hit your head? Did you not hit your head? All those types of things.
Then go ahead, take your camera and start taking pictures of the interior of your car, like if the airbag deployed, things like that. Get out, take pictures of everything with your smartphone, making sure you have your insurance with you when you get out if you’re able to retrieve it, and then look around and see who saw what happened, take their pictures.
Recording Evidence and Contacting the Authorities
Someone’s going to come up and say, are you okay, are you okay? The answer is probably going to be, the truthful one is probably going to be, I don’t know. You may not feel hurt yet, but you know, two, three, four days later, you may not be able to move. So make sure you’re okay. Start recording everything with your smartphone and call the police. I would prefer you call the police before you even get out of the car if you’re able to. Just 911. I’ve been in an accident. They’re going to ask you, are you injured? Answer, I don’t know, because you’re in shock.
Get all the information you can. Like I said, if there are people who said they saw what happened, get the smartphone and say, may I record your name and what you saw? Do that, because the police many times don’t do that, and that could be crucial in a lawsuit down the road. That witness could be the difference between you being held at fault or the other driver being held at fault.
The Role of the Police and Taking Responsibility for Your Actions
So you want to go ahead and preserve the scene. Take pictures of everything. If it moves, take a picture. If it doesn’t move, take a picture anyway. Do not admit fault. Do not say, I’m sorry. Ask, are you okay to the other driver? Do not discuss the facts of what happened until the police get there. Generally, there’ll be a policeman, maybe two. If there are two, one will take one driver. One will take the other driver. If there’s only one, they’ll start with one individual outside the hearing of the other and then they’ll go to the other.
Now at that point, they probably have not talked to any of the eyewitnesses, surrounders or good Samaritans, and they won’t unless they feel they need to. So it’s incumbent upon you, even though you’re doing it with your smartphone, saying, officer, these people saw what happened. They said they saw what happened. Could you talk to them and have the officer do that? Now they don’t like to do that, but you’re entitled to have them do that.
But the one thing I want to tell you is that a police officer is not an expert on reconstructing an accident. They are an accident investigator under Oklahoma law. So that means they cannot give their opinions in a civil trial as to what happened because they cannot qualify under 2702 or 2703 of the Oklahoma Evidence Code as an expert. They can talk about what they observed. They can talk about measurements. They can talk about positions of the vehicles. They cannot talk about whether or not they gave a citation.
Take Care of Your Health and Seek Legal Assistance
Stay calm, record everything, get everything written down you can. Call your insurance company immediately after the accident. Go get checked out. Last thing I want to stress, even though you think you might be able to go swimming the next day or climb Kilimanjaro, get checked out. There’s no excuse for it. And I cannot tell you the number of times people said, oh, I went five, eight, nine days later. You know, they said I had a little bit of something going on. The longer you wait to get checked out, if something’s wrong, the more the other side is going to attack you that you really weren’t hurt. You’re not a medical professional. You’re just an individual that was in an accident. That was not your fault. Please make sure you’re okay.
Contact Us for a Low-cost Consultation
And then, after you call the insurance company to give your statement, call me. Oklahoma auto accident attorney Mike Ashworth, TulsaPersonalInjuryLawyer.pro, 918-924-5528. And even if it’s not a personal injury case, I’ll get you to the right person in our office. Take care.
