A car accident is a scary experience that most people don’t want to live in their lives. However, these things are often inevitable, and it is impossible to stop someone from hitting your car entirely. Since precaution is better than cure, we strongly recommend that you get up-to-date with what you should do if someone hits your car.
There are a lot of aspects that you need to consider when someone hits your car. Factors like – how much the damage is, what reliable engine and car headlight manufacturers are available to you for repairs, and what your first line of action should be.
To answer all of these questions in a comprehensive and detailed manner, we have written this guide just for you so that you know what things you are supposed to do if someone hits your car.
Call 911
Regardless of whether someone hits your car while it is parked or while you are driving, the first thing you need to ensure is that you get to safety and call 911 as soon as possible. Contacting police officers should be your first line of action because the earlier they arrive at the scene, the better it is for all the parties involved – especially you.
The police officers will check if everyone is alright at the scene and, if needed, will call medical emergency services along with them. However, the most important reason you need to call the police is that they write a police report that is essential when you file for an insurance claim later.
The police officers also maintain your complete safety from the person who hit your car and ensure that you get all the protection you need for the upcoming days.
Collect all information and data possible
If you are not seriously injured and are willing to do a few things to ensure that you get your insurance claim, we recommend collecting all information possible on the spot. This includes noting down the license plate number of the vehicle that hit you, the company and the model of the vehicle if possible, the date and time of when the accident happened, and the contact information of all the people nearby who saw the accident and can serve as witnesses.
If the person who hit you is present with you, as they should be if they don’t want to be charged with a hit-and-run crime, you should get their name and all the details of their insurance policy. This will serve as crucial information while you are filing your insurance claim with the insurance company.
Document everything you can
While you are fresh on the scene of the accident, we suggest documenting every little detail possible in a reliable and safe format, such as pictures or a video. Capture the photos of both vehicles – the perpetrator’s vehicle for identification and proof and your vehicle as proof of the damage incurred. Utilize your car’s excellent lighting and mirrors to capture the footage of your car’s interior as proof.
Capture your surroundings in pictures or footage to indicate the location you were in. If you have the feature available at hand, try geo-tagging your pictures to give your insurance claim more credibility and support. Also, make sure that you document away the license plates in particular and, if possible, the identity of the individual that hit your vehicle.
While the third-party insurance company would verify it themselves, capturing a recorded testament from any of the witnesses who watched the accident can also count as valid document proof for your car accident.
Start the insurance claims process right away
Now that you have finished documenting away all the immediate proof you had at the scene and collecting every little bit of information possible, you should start your insurance claim process right away. While the first natural response of filing an insurance claim for your car that was hit by someone else should be contacting the insurance company of the individual that hit you, we suggest calling your own insurance company first and notifying them what happened.
Insurance companies can often work with each other and provide you with the best possible solution that compensates you with an amount for all incurred damage while keeping their own insurance buyer satisfied with the results. This also helps you get minimal competition from the third-party insurance company when you contact them to file your insurance claim.
As long as you know that your car was damaged by another individual who had their insurance in the company, and you have all the proof to back that claim, all you need to do is file an insurance claim for liability insurance. The insurance company will be forced to give you all the money for the car damages plus a few extras on top for any grief caused.
All the documents you collected earlier come in extremely handy for this section of the process.
Stay in touch with the insurance company
Insurance companies are notorious for withholding money that belongs to users who filed for an insurance claim. Insurance companies, especially if they are third-party and not your own insurance providers, will often investigate the accident’s details to figure out a way to get their client out of trouble and make your own insurance claim invalidated.
This is where the professional documentation and information gathering you did at the scene comes in to be extremely useful. If everything goes smoothly, you should get a direct payment for the damage compensation to your bank account.
If by a rare chance, your claim is declared invalid for whatever reason by the third-party insurance agency, you can file for an insurance claim with your insurance provider under “collision coverage.” However, you need to ensure that the car damage is quite extensive to claim this type of insurance.
Conclusion
While going through car accidents is quite a traumatic experience, there are still a number of things you need to do if you want to ensure that you get full compensation for the car damage. We hope this article was insightful for you and if it was, please consider following our website for regular updates as it will help us out immensely.
