Is it possible to file a claim with your insurance company after a Mercedes accident without a police report? There are a couple of ways you can do as such. Find out how you can use your legal rights in this situation by reading on.
Mandatory Reporting to the Police Per the Law In Georgia, most drivers consider calling 911 to report any car accident they have been a part of to be common practice. If such a call is made to 911, a police officer will arrive at the scene to conduct an investigation into the accident, and an ambulance will typically also be sent to the location of any potential injuries are reported to the operator. However, if the damage is minimal, the vehicles are still legal to drive, no one appears to have been injured, and both drivers agree that they would prefer to continue their day without having to wait for the police, the question of whether you need to call the police is frequently asked in crashes that appear to be of a minor nature.
O.C.G.A. 40-6-273 provides the precise legal response to that question. According to this statute, anyone who is involved in a car accident that causes damage to a vehicle that appears to be $500 or more or that injures or kills another person is required to notify the local police as soon as possible. Inability to do culpable as a misdeed offense is as well. As a result, submitting a police report is required in almost all car accidents.
Making a police report is still strongly recommended even if you do not believe the crash resulted in any injuries and the damage appears to be less than $500. This is because the extent of injuries often cannot be determined at the scene when shock and adrenaline are running high. Reporting to the police would be legally excused. It should also be noted that $500 is a very low threshold for property damage due to the high cost of even minor repairs on most modern automobiles, particularly Mercedes models. It would be a very rare and minor accident in which reporting to the police would be allowed by law, so there is no point in taking that chance. This is especially obvious given the opportunity that the other driver could be viewed as uninsured or underinsured which will be additionally made sense of immediately.
However, if the damage to your vehicle is less than $500 and there were no injuries, can you still file an insurance claim without a police report? Or, if the accident was one of those that should have been reported but you didn’t, is it possible to file a successful insurance claim even if there isn’t a police report? Indeed, you can if (and provided that) you know the character of the other driver and their insurance agency. However, you will need to ensure that you have obtained all of the information that the police would have gathered if you had called them, such as the other driver’s name and address, the make and model of their vehicle, the information on their registration (tag), and the policy number and company of their liability insurance. Since cops are prepared to search for this data and are more probable than you are to get the data as well as to ensure it is precise, it checks out even in crashes where it isn’t expected to in any case report it to the police and get a report.
The law in Georgia even gives police officers permission to respond to and report crashes that take place on private property like parking lots, where the rules that apply to public roads may not always apply and the officer may not be able to issue a traffic ticket to the driver who was at fault. Also, insurance companies are used to seeing police reports in claims for car accidents. They like to see that a neutral third party has looked into the accident and taken statements about how it happened, so making a claim without telling the police makes them unnecessarily suspicious. Except if you have perpetrated a wrongdoing you dread a cop examining the accident will find, you have significantly more to lose by not calling the police to report your accident than you do by calling them.
On the off chance that you don’t have a clue about the character of the other driver and are in this way making a case on your own uninsured driver protection inclusion, you should stringently follow O.C.G.A. § 40-6-273 and report the accident to the police by the fastest method for correspondence. As indicated by O.C.G.A. § 33-7-11(c), in the event that you neglect to report the accident to the police as fast as could really be expected, your insurance agency can deny your case for uninsured driver inclusion.
Indeed, even a somewhat short pause of 4 to 5 days has been held to be inadequate to follow the necessities of O.C.G.A. § 40-6-273. Georgia courts have strictly interpreted these statutes to require a report to the police by the quickest means of communication as a condition precedent to the insurance company’s duty to provide uninsured motorist coverage, regardless of whether you have a good excuse for the delay or whether the delay does not seem entirely unreasonable under the circumstances. To put it another way, regardless of how many years you have faithfully paid premiums on your policy, the insurance company has no legal obligation to provide coverage on your uninsured motorist claim if you do not first comply with your duty to make a report to the police as soon as possible. As a result, if you are the victim of a hit-and-run accident, you must report it to the police right away or have someone else do so on your behalf if you are injured and unable to do so.
A Report to the Police of an Accident is Basic
A report to the police in case of a quick in-and-out crash is basic for one more explanation too. In accordance with Georgia law, in the event of a hit-and-run accident in which the other driver’s identity is unknown, you must be able to demonstrate that there was actual physical contact between your vehicle and the other driver’s unless you have an eyewitness to back up your claim.
This means that if you don’t have a witness to back up your claim, you may not be able to recover even under your own uninsured motorist coverage if another driver ran you off the road or did something to cause you to crash without hitting your car. In the event of a hit-and-run, it is always a good idea to call the police because they can use their investigative training to try to document any slight physical contact between your vehicle and the other vehicle with physical evidence like paint transfer. This is one reason why it is always a good idea to call the police.
They can likewise examine and attempt to reproduce the accident to decide whether your form of occasion is upheld by some other proof, for example, slip marks, garbage, traffic cameras or close-by observation cameras, different observers, or harm to your vehicle. Maybe in particular, they can attempt to find the other vehicle and driver so you can make a case on their protection without using your own protection inclusion that may not be expected to cover your case.
The Bottom Line for Making an Insurance Claim After a Mercedes Car Accident Without a Police Report The bottom line is that making an insurance claim after a Mercedes car accident without a police report is only extremely rare. Be that as it may, the better practice by a wide margin even in minor accidents is to call the police and have a report created in light of the fact that you simply never realize what might occur not too far off. Try not to feel remorseful that the other driver might be given a traffic ticket. That is up to the police officer, who may choose not to issue a ticket if the driver is cooperative and the damage isn’t too bad. In numerous different cases, on the off chance that protection deals with the bills, a ticket might be all excused once it will court. So you can’t stress over what might befall the other driver in the event that you call the police. Be even more concerned about the issues we’ve discussed here that you might encounter if you don’t report your crash to the police.
About the Contributor, Mr. Spaulding has assisted victims of negligence throughout the state of Georgia in resolving personal injury disputes. As a result of his dedication to both his clients and the metro Atlanta area, he has received a remarkable number of awards and honors from the legal community.