After a car accident, everything goes topsy-turvy in your life. Your car may be damaged or gone, your body hurts in ways you didn’t expect, and suddenly people you’ve never met—including insurance adjusters, repair shops, and medical personnel—are asking for information you may not have handy.
Somewhere in the middle of all that, someone may ask, “Do you have a police report?”
That question alone can cause stress. You may not understand exactly what a police report is, what information is on it, or whether not having one could hurt your injury claim. Understanding the role a police report plays in a Virginia Beach car accident case can take away some of that stress and help you feel more positive about your ability to recover your damages.
For decades, Shapiro, Washburn & Sharp has represented injured victims as Virginia Beach car accident attorneys, reviewing police reports line by line and spotting the small details that insurance companies rely on to deny or reduce claims. That hands-on experience is one reason the firm has been recognized as a Tier 1 “Best Law Firm” for personal injury work.
Contact us at 833-997-1774 for a free consultation today. We understand how overwhelming this time can be, and we know exactly what you need to build a strong legal claim.
A police report is an official document that a police officer creates after responding to a car accident. When you call 911 or the police department after a crash, an officer will usually come to the scene to investigate what happened. They’ll talk to everyone involved, look at the damage to the vehicles, check out the road conditions, and gather all the facts they can find. Once the officer finishes examining the entire scene, they’ll write up everything they noted in an official report.
This will include things like the following:
Some reports even include a diagram showing how the collision happened.
This then becomes part of the public record and serves as the closest thing to an official account of what happened during your accident.
When you file a claim with an insurance company after a car accident, you have to prove what happened. Your word isn’t enough. So how do you convince this company that the other driver was at fault and that you deserve compensation?
This is where the police report becomes critical. It is an unbiased third-party account of the accident. For that reason, insurance companies typically take police reports seriously. So if the officer wrote that one driver ran a red light, was speeding, or failed to yield, that carries more weight than if you just say that’s what happened.
The police report also ensures you have accurate information about the other driver and their insurance. People may give you the wrong information at the scene of an accident, or you might forget to ask about it. The police report is where you can make sure you have all the facts you need to file your claim correctly.
If your case ends up going to court, the police report can lead you to witnesses who can add evidence to your case, and the officer may even be called in to testify about what they observed at the scene.
What if you want to get a copy of your police report? How do you do that?
In Virginia, you can request a copy of your accident report from the appropriate police department. You’ll typically need to provide basic information, such as the date of the accident, the location, and the names of the people involved. You may also have to pay a small fee to get the report.
You can go to the police department in person to request a copy of the report, or in many instances, you can request the report online through the department’s website. (Virginia Beach has a process here that you can follow.) Some people prefer to mail in their requests, which you can still do in some locations, though it will probably take longer. The exact process may vary, so it’s worth checking the police department’s website or calling them to find out how to proceed.
If you hire a car accident lawyer to help you with your case, they will typically take care of requesting the report for you.
It usually takes anywhere from a few days to a couple of weeks to receive your report, depending on the department’s workload. That’s why it’s important to submit this request as soon as you can, so you have the evidence you need.
Sometimes people don’t have a police report after an accident. It may have seemed minor at the time, so no one called the police. Or maybe the police came but didn’t file a report because the damage seemed minimal. Or maybe you were so shaken up that you left the scene without making sure a report had been filed.
Not having a police report doesn’t mean you can’t pursue a claim, but it can make things harder. Without the official documentation, you lack the plain factual evidence that could have supported your version of the events. Without other types of proof, the at-fault driver may deny that the accident happened at all or claim that you were at fault or even partially at fault, which in Virginia would bar you from recovering anything at all. (In Virginia, if you’re even found to be one percent at fault for the accident, you cannot recover any compensation.)
Without a police report, other evidence becomes even more important. That can include all of the following:
Even if you didn’t get a police report at the scene, it might not be too late. In Virginia, you’re required to report accidents that result in injury, death, or property damage over a certain amount. You can file a report with the Department of Motor Vehicles, which creates an official record of the accident even if it’s not the same as a police report filed at the scene.
A Virginia Beach car accident attorney doesn’t just “file paperwork.” They will help you build the story with the proof you need while protecting you from any tactics the insurance company may try to use against you.
At Shapiro, Washburn & Sharp, we focus early on preserving evidence before it is erased or lost. As soon as you hire us, we go to work getting the police report, tracking down witnesses, requesting video footage, collecting medical records, and showing how the injury will affect your future.
In one Virginia Beach car accident case, for example, our firm obtained a $1 million insurance settlement for a client who suffered massive leg and ankle injuries when a turning driver failed to yield the right of way. That result didn’t happen because of one document alone—it came from us building the evidence, proving the harm that was done to our client, and pushing back when the defense tried to minimize the damage.
If you or a loved one was injured in a Virginia Beach car accident, contact our offices right away. We have them in Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Suffolk, Chesapeake, Hampton, and Portsmouth.
After a car accident, everything goes topsy-turvy in your life. Your car may be damaged or gone, your body hurts in ways you didn’t expect, and suddenly people you’ve never met—including insurance adjusters, repair shops, and medical personnel—are asking for information you may not have handy. Somewhere in the middle of all that, someone may…
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