It’s never something you really expect to happen, but there are millions of reported car accidents in the United States every year. In almost every case, the driver didn’t expect anything to happen then, either. So even if you don’t think the following information about how to handle an accident will come in handy, it can pay to remember it anyway.
1. Stay Calm
Take a deep breath and don’t rush yourself. You may need to act quickly before and during an accident, but once things stop moving, stay calm and think things through.
2. Get Out of the Road
If you’re still on the road after the accident, and if your vehicle still works, you should pull over at the next safe location. If your vehicle doesn’t work, then you and any passengers should get out and walk to a safe location. You should also switch on your hazard lights if possible, and don’t stay inside the vehicle unless the weather makes standing outside a bad idea and you’re sure the vehicle is still in a safe condition.
3. Make Sure Everyone Is Okay
As a result of the roughly 5.7 million annual accidents, over 2 million individuals suffer from mild to severe injuries and over 30,000 die. Even if the accident happened at low speed, such as someone rear-ending you at a stoplight, you should check yourself and everyone in your car for injuries. Whiplash can be a surprisingly damaging injury that doesn’t seem too bad at first, so make sure you keep track of who has a sore neck or a headache. If there were any other cars involved, you should also check to see how those passengers are doing.
4. Call 911
There are a lot of accidents and car crashes in America that people don’t report to the police, or for which the police don’t bother writing a report. These accidents are the sort of low-speed fender-benders and parking lot collisions that don’t result in any injuries and don’t even cost the insurance company much money. However, for anything more serious than that, you should call emergency services.
5. Collect Information
If there are multiple cars involved, get the insurance information from the other drivers, along with their driver’s license numbers for good measure. If you can, you should take pictures of the cars, the people, and anything else that got hit in the accident. When it’s time to file an insurance claim, all of this supporting information will come in handy.
6. Don’t Admit Fault
Unless you hit a stationary object, it’s not always clear who’s at fault for an accident, and even if you think it was all on you at the time, it may turn out later that you were wrong and someone else caused the accident. However, you’ll never know that for certain if you admit fault at the scene because the police and the insurance companies often don’t dig any deeper when someone admits to being responsible.
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