Georgia has major cities but also plenty of rural areas. Whether you’re in a metropolitan part of the state or not, you can always get in a car accident. Another driver might strike your vehicle if they’re careless or they break one of the rules of the road.
Police reports are crucial for understanding car accidents, and you might need a copy of the one pertaining to your crash if you’re suing the other driver. However, such a report may also come in handy when filing a car accident claim. Georgia drivers and visitors should know how to do that, so let’s talk about the steps you would take right now.
Get the Police Report and Any Other Relevant Documents
Let’s imagine a scenario for a moment. You live in Atlanta, and you’re driving in the suburbs when another motorist hits your car. They stay on the scene and wait for the police to arrive. When they do, you and the other driver tell them what happened. The police make out a report that details the crash and the events causing it.
You can’t get a copy of the police report on the scene, but you can get a copy from the police department soon enough. You can go there in person and obtain a copy or they might send it to you through the mail. The police report should prove useful. You can have it close by when you contact your insurance company and tell them what occurred.
However, you may also want to have that police report if you hire a personal injury lawyer and sue the other driver. That doesn’t happen after every Georgia car wreck, but it does after many of them.
Contact Your Insurance Company and Tell Them What Happened
After you get a doctor to look you over and you have a tow truck take your car to the nearest garage, you can move on to the next logical step. You must contact your insurance company and tell them what happened.
You can tell them another driver hit your car, and you can explain in detail what happened afterward. Don’t speculate over the phone about who caused the crash. The details will reveal that. If you say something indicating you think you caused the accident, that can come back to hurt you later.
You should also explicitly state to the insurance company representative you speak to that you want to file a claim. The sooner you get the ball rolling on that, the better. The insurance company will take some time to investigate the circumstances of the accident. The sooner you can file a claim, the sooner you can get the financial compensation necessary to pay for your car repairs.
Get the Form Through the Mail or By Filling It Out Online
You can either get your insurance company to send you a form to fill out through the mail, or else you might fill one out online and send it to the company that way. Each insurance company has slightly different rules about that, so you must see what yours wants from you. You should follow their instructions.
When you get the form through the mail or find it online, having a physical copy usually makes the most sense. That’s because, in addition to questions you can answer, these forms often come with a space where you’re supposed to draw a depiction of the car accident.
You don’t need to have excellent art skills to do this. The company normally looks for just a rudimentary diagram of your car’s location, the other vehicle’s location when it hit you, and the approximate layout of the road or crash site at the time the collision occurred. You should also add traffic lights or anything else you deem relevant to get across the basic idea of what happened.
Wait for the Company to Respond
After you send the insurance company the paperwork, they should get back to you quickly. They always have agents standing by, ready to look into claims to check on their validity.
Assuming you told the truth about what happened, they should process the claim and get back to you within a matter of days. If they rejected your claim for some reason, maybe they did it because they noticed something fishy about the version of events you gave them. If so, you must probably hire a lawyer to help you.
