Why Call The Police?
I’m here to discuss the significance of filing a police report in cases of car versus pedestrian, bike versus pedestrian, or car versus car accidents. If there were any injuries or crashes involving a car, truck, bicycle, motorcycle, or any other type of motor vehicle, you must file a police report. I briefly discussed why in the previous article. I believe I said in the last article that I truly intended to show you the police report so you could see all the crucial details we learn from these situations.
The first item I want to bring up is the orange paperwork you always receive whenever a motor vehicle incident occurs, such as a car crash, truck crash, motorbike crash, or anything similar. This is the Illinois motorist report; it is not an official crash report and is more of a means of information sharing. It is always written by hand and is sometimes quite difficult to read. Nowadays, a crash report is often written; I've blacked out some details to protect people's privacy, but this is the one that states Illinois traffic collision report.
What details of the Illinois traffic collision report are important?
We'll start by going from top to bottom, it is crucial to have the report numbers so that we may buy this and use it as a reference if necessary. This is the Rd number. A template that you may get online has several numeric codes that the officer enters, including information on the temperature, the state of the roads, the lighting, and other factors of this nature. Although I have a fantastic lawyer in my office, this provides information about what the officer claims happened in the collision.
We obtain the precise location, the date, and the time, which is critical, and then this portion is for unit 1 and they normally put the individual who they believe caused the crash in unit 1. The remaining automobiles are then placed in unit 2, and if there is a multi-vehicle situation, they can attach further pages of the document, but what information do we gain here? We obtain the defendant's name, date of birth, address, phone number, driver's license number, and plate number, and all of that information helps me identify the defendant if they try to avoid us. It also informs us who owns the automobile, so if we have a plate number and they run a plate, we know who owns the car but it's hit-and-run.
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It Provides The Specific Information
The law presumes that the owner of the automobile was driving it, and then another key box here who the insurance is, the policy number, and all that type of things. Then there's a tiny graphic that indicates where the damage to the automobile was, which is useful if two people have very different ideas about how the incident happened. Physical evidence is sometimes quite significant in identifying who caused the incident, and then we acquire that information for the other drivers as well.
These boxes record the witnesses, who typically provide some identifying information such as address and phone number which makes it easier for us to investigate. It's typically like if someone got a ticket they include that information and then the co. will contact them. This is an essential part - this is people who were injured and or witnesses. So if someone tells the police officer they saw the entire thing but you were not in a position to go get any witnesses' phone numbers or names, those boxes record the witnesses.
It Records The Incident
The first side provides us with a wealth of specific information about the accident thanks to these numerical codes and a template for them. The officer then sketches a diagram of what he or she believes happened, or if they witnessed it, they do it based on recollection; otherwise, it is based on an interview with the witnesses and parties involved. The second side is also very crucial since we have the Rd or report number here. The narrative portion follows, where the officer describes what they observed and/or what the parties and witnesses stated so that it might be beneficial. Therefore, we must know if Unit 1, the driver of the collision, starts giving us a tale about what occurred even if we are aware that it is untrue but that on the day of the crash they told the office or anything else.
As you can see, even though this seems like a bunch of jargon, there is a lot of really important information here. For this reason, getting a police report, looking into it, reading it, and taking the time to get the information off the report is extremely important. Hopefully, this has made things clearer for you. Give me a call if you have any queries.
I'm happy to talk to you, you can reach out to me if you have any question, give me a call 312-500-4500.
