Today if you were to ask an emergency service worker if they attend Road Traffic Accidents, they will say no but we do attend Road Traffic Collisions and the difference may seem subtle but it is profound as it means that the authorities no longer accept accident as a reason for any incident involving vehicle collisions and wish to apportion culpability.
If you are involved in an incident and find yourself facing this mentality of others wishing to apportion blame , then you would be wise to take the step of hiring an investigator to work on your behalf to help establish the facts and absolve you of any culpability.
The reasons for vehicle collisions are too numerous and varied to list but as an example you can have it range from factory defects on new cars through to being hit by another driver who was under the influence of drink or drugs.
Finding out which matters affected you is paramount when building a case against a third party in an accident claims process.
Therefore hiring a professional accident investigator will give your claim the best chance of success.
The idea behind getting an accident investigator involved is that you may be totally overwhelmed by the whole experience of what you have witnessed and what you have just been through.
Couple this with the fact you may be injured or at the very least suffering from the effects of adrenaline (which can cause, amongst other things, uncertainty and an inability to think properly), understandably your priorities are not on evidence gathering for future determination of blame and compensation.
Even after the initial occurrence a top investigator can make sense of the crash location and be able to look past the removal of the vehicles, the lack of eyewitnesses and the chaos caused by those at the scene who were rendering assistance.
Of course there is a limit to their abilities when attending a site for the purpose of gathering information and it is imperative that you employ someone as soon as is practicable.
When it comes to determining what has happened at the scene of an RTC an investigator will:
Photograph and create a plan of the scene, inclusive of road measurements.
Interview the witnesses and other parties involved.
Conduct Police interviews and collect statements.
Submit a report based on their conclusions.
An example of just how an accident investigator can aid you in a claim.
This case involved our investigator ascertaining additional information about the driver of the convertible car that had struck our client and discovered that the driver had in fact been standing on his seat just prior to the incident.
As you can imagine this piece of additional information proved invaluable in our clients compensation claim against the other party.
No one else, not even the Police, had got that information from the witnesses.
Making things right again after being involved in a collision whilst driving your car is important.
You owe it to yourself to get the best assistance possible and getting the right accident claims investigator is a step in the right direction.
