It is hard to keep straight all the details of a car accident in which you were involved when you describe the accident to an insurance claims adjuster. You have probably heard of the exercise in criminology classes, where a visitor enters the classroom, has a brief conversation with the professor, and then leaves; the professor then asks the students to describe the visitor, and their descriptions are vague and inconsistent. The professor then expounds on the unreliability of eyewitness testimony. To make matters worse, when you give a statement to the insurance company, the claims adjuster asks misleading questions and draws you into digressions to try to get you to contradict yourself. You take consolation in the fact that a police officer wrote a police report at the scene of the accident, so that at least the insurance company can rely on that. Everything is fine if the police report accurately represents the accident, but this is not always the case. If you were injured in a car accident, and you are wondering how helpful the police report will be in getting you a fair settlement from the insurance company, contact a Houma car accident lawyer.
When You Read the Police Report About Your Car Accident, Think Like an Insurance Adjuster
The police officer who responds to a car accident and writes a police report is only human. A major difference between you and the officer is that the officer was not present when the accident happened. Therefore, officers who write police reports about collisions are using their human judgment to write a summary of the accident and the events leading up to it, based on what the drivers involved and perhaps other witnesses said.
Before you submit the police report to the insurance company in support of your insurance claim, read it carefully. Imagine that an insurance claims adjuster is reading the police report and thinks about anything in the report that the claims adjuster might use to attribute a greater share of fault for the accident to you. When in doubt, ask a personal injury lawyer to help you interpret the police report and see if there is anything in it that a claims adjuster might interpret negatively. If the report seems biased against you, or if it contains inaccurate information, you have the right to challenge the police report and get the police to issue an amended report. To do this, you must submit evidence to the police department to show how their original report is inaccurate. Your evidence might include pictures you took at the scene of the accident or a report from the doctor who examined you at the emergency room afterward.
Contact the Law Office of Patrick H. Yancey About Personal Injury Cases
A personal injury lawyer can help you if the police report about the accident in which you were involved is inaccurate. Contact the Law Office of Patrick H. Yancey in Houma, Louisiana, to set up a consultation about your case.
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