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After a car accident, two drivers may remember the same collision very differently.
One person says the light was green. The other insists it was red. One driver says they changed lanes safely. The other says the vehicle suddenly moved directly in front of them.
Insurance companies must eventually evaluate these competing accounts and determine issues such as liability and damages.
Evidence can make those decisions less dependent on conflicting memories.
At Skousen, Gulbrandsen & Patience, PLC, we encourage Arizona accident victims to preserve as much relevant information as reasonably possible after a collision. Car accident evidence in Arizona can help establish who caused the accident, document the injuries that resulted, and demonstrate the financial impact the collision has had on the injured person.
Some of the most valuable evidence may also disappear quickly, which makes early documentation particularly important.
A personal injury claim generally involves more than proving that an accident happened.
Important questions can include:
Different evidence can help answer different questions.
A video may help establish how the collision occurred. Medical records may document injuries and treatment. Pay records can help establish lost income. Photographs may document vehicle damage and roadway conditions.
Together, these pieces of evidence can provide a much more complete picture of the accident and its consequences.
Your health and safety come first after a collision.
If your condition and the circumstances allow you to safely gather information, the accident scene can provide evidence that may be difficult or impossible to recreate later.
Photographs are one of the easiest ways to preserve information immediately after a crash.
Try to document more than just a close-up of the damaged portion of your vehicle.
Useful photographs may include:
Wide photographs can establish context while closer photographs can preserve specific details.
Video can also be useful for documenting the entire scene.
Arizona law requires drivers involved in qualifying accidents to provide certain information.
Under Arizona Revised Statutes § 28-663, a driver involved in an accident resulting in injury, death, or damage to an attended vehicle must provide information including the driver's name, address, and vehicle registration number. The statute also requires the driver, on request, to exhibit a driver's license to the appropriate people involved in the collision.
Make sure you obtain the other driver's identifying and insurance information when possible.
Do not rely exclusively on writing the information down. Taking photographs of insurance cards, license plates, and other relevant information can reduce the chance of a transcription mistake.
Independent witnesses can become extremely important when drivers disagree about what happened.
A witness may have seen:
Get the witness's name and reliable contact information.
Do not assume law enforcement or an insurance company will always be able to locate the witness later.
A police report can become an important source of information after an Arizona car accident.
Arizona law requires law enforcement officers or public employees who investigate certain motor vehicle accidents to complete written accident reports. Depending on the circumstances, those reports may contain information identifying the drivers and witnesses, a narrative description of the accident, and a diagram of the scene.
The report may also document other information gathered during the investigation.
A police report should not necessarily be viewed as the only evidence determining civil liability. An officer may not have personally witnessed the collision, and additional evidence can provide information that was unavailable during the initial investigation.
Still, obtaining and reviewing the report can be an important part of investigating the accident.
Proving how an accident happened is only part of a personal injury claim.
You also need evidence showing the injuries and damages caused by the collision.
Medical documentation can include:
These records can document when symptoms were reported, what doctors diagnosed, which treatments were recommended, and how recovery progressed.
Some accident injuries produce immediate symptoms. Others become more noticeable in the hours or days after a collision.
If you experience pain, dizziness, headaches, numbness, limited mobility, or other concerning symptoms after an accident, seek appropriate medical care.
Waiting for a legal claim to develop before seeking treatment is not the right approach. Your health should come first.
From an evidentiary standpoint, contemporaneous medical documentation can also help establish when symptoms appeared and what treatment was necessary.
Some of the strongest evidence may not be in either driver's possession.
A nearby business may have recorded the collision. Another vehicle may have a dashcam. A commercial vehicle may contain electronic or operational information relevant to the accident.
Identifying these sources quickly can be important.
Potential video sources may include:
Many surveillance systems do not preserve footage indefinitely.
A camera may have recorded the accident perfectly, but that evidence provides little help if the recording is overwritten before anyone identifies and preserves it.
Dashcams can sometimes provide a direct view of what occurred immediately before an accident.
Ask witnesses whether they recorded the collision. Other vehicles traveling through the area may also have captured relevant footage.
If you have your own dashcam, preserve the original recording rather than assuming it will remain stored on the device.
Modern vehicles can contain electronic information that may be relevant to certain accident investigations.
Depending on the vehicle and circumstances, available information may help investigators evaluate issues such as speed, braking, or other vehicle activity.
Not every accident requires electronic vehicle analysis. In a severe collision where liability is disputed, however, this information may become important.
Truck and commercial vehicle accidents can involve additional evidence that may not exist in an ordinary passenger vehicle case.
Depending on the circumstances, potentially relevant records may include driver information, company records, electronic data, maintenance documentation, and other materials.
Serious commercial vehicle accidents should therefore be investigated with the possibility of additional evidence in mind.
Injuries are only one part of the losses someone may experience after a collision.
A serious accident can create substantial financial consequences.
Keep documentation relating to expenses and income losses, including:
If an injury affects your ability to work for an extended period, employment and income documentation may become particularly important.
Do not rely on memory to reconstruct these expenses months later.
Create a dedicated location, physical or digital, where accident-related documents can be stored.
One reason we emphasize early investigation is that evidence does not necessarily remain available forever.
A surveillance recording may be deleted.
A damaged vehicle may be repaired or sent to salvage.
Road construction may change.
Debris may be cleared.
Skid marks may disappear.
Witnesses may become difficult to locate.
Memories can fade.
The longer an accident goes without investigation, the greater the possibility that potentially valuable evidence will no longer be available.
This does not mean every car accident requires an immediate large-scale investigation. It means accident victims should recognize that some evidence is time-sensitive.
Sometimes an accident victim discovers that the insurance information provided at the scene is unavailable, incorrect, or no longer valid.
The Arizona Department of Transportation provides a process for people involved in qualifying crashes with Arizona-registered vehicles to request insurance information about another vehicle involved in the collision.
ADOT requires a law enforcement crash report for this process.
This resource may become useful when insurance information cannot be confirmed after an accident.
Evidence becomes particularly important when an insurance company claims you were partially responsible for the collision.
Arizona uses comparative negligence.
That means an injured person's compensation can be reduced according to that person's percentage of responsibility when comparative negligence applies.
Suppose your damages are established at $100,000 but you are determined to have been 25 percent responsible for the accident.
The recoverable damages could be reduced by 25 percent.
A disagreement over fault can therefore have significant financial consequences.
This is why evidence such as photographs, video, witnesses, and physical damage can become so important. The issue is not simply whose version sounds more convincing. Objective evidence may support or contradict what each driver says occurred.
Some evidence problems are unavoidable. Others can be prevented.
Keep copies of insurance correspondence, bills, receipts, repair estimates, and medical documentation.
Organized records make it easier to understand the complete financial effect of an accident.
Preserve original digital files when possible.
Avoid relying exclusively on social media uploads or compressed copies of photographs and video.
Be cautious about discussing an active injury claim publicly.
Photos, comments, videos, and descriptions of your activities may be reviewed in connection with a disputed claim.
Sometimes damaged property may have evidentiary value.
This is particularly important in severe collisions involving disputed liability, possible vehicle defects, or unusual circumstances.
Before potentially important physical evidence is destroyed, consider whether it should first be documented or inspected.
The longer you wait, the greater the chance that witnesses, video, physical evidence, and other information will become unavailable.
When injuries are serious or liability is disputed, an attorney can help identify evidence that may need to be obtained or preserved.
Depending on the case, that may involve:
Some cases may also require formal preservation requests or other legal procedures to prevent relevant evidence from being lost.
At Skousen, Gulbrandsen & Patience, PLC, we evaluate the evidence surrounding the entire collision rather than relying only on the initial statements made by the drivers or insurance companies.
You cannot control everything that happens after a car accident.
You can, however, take reasonable steps to preserve information.
Photographs, videos, witness statements, police reports, medical records, employment records, bills, and other documentation can help establish what happened and demonstrate how the collision affected your life.
Evidence becomes especially important when an insurance company disputes liability, questions the severity of an injury, or argues that you contributed to the accident.
At Skousen, Gulbrandsen & Patience, PLC, we represent people injured in motor vehicle accidents throughout Phoenix, Mesa, and communities across Arizona. Our attorneys can investigate the circumstances of a collision, identify potentially important evidence, and help clients understand their options for pursuing compensation.
If you were injured in an Arizona car accident and have questions about what evidence may be important to your claim, contact our legal team to discuss your situation.
Photo by Luana Scorsoni