Police Involved Car Accident: What to Do
When car accidents happen, they are stressful events that often result in injury. You may know what to do after a traffic accident with another motorist, but what happens when that other motorist is a police officer?
Police officers are held to different standards and have different rights when performing their jobs. This means that a police car hitting another motorist’s vehicle can make for a complicated process. Police car accident claims are difficult to navigate without the help of a personal injury lawyer.
Crown & Stone Law, P.C. is a personal injury law firm that understands these complexities and works to help injured victims take legal action for a police vehicle collision. In this blog post, we provide police crash legal guidance and explain why you need an attorney to help you with this type of personal injury claim.
Understanding Accidents Involving a Police Car
When a police car hits your vehicle, it is different from other types of car accidents. You may still be entitled to compensation but when a car accident involves a police officer as the other party, it may be a challenge to recover compensation through insurance claims.
The California Department of Motor Vehicles and the California Highway Patrol’s involvement may create red tape that is hard to work around without a personal injury attorney. Additionally, insurance companies and insurance claims involving a police officer are more complicated than ones involving a car accident with a fellow civilian driver.
Despite this, you still have the right to hold a police officer liable if they caused the accident due to negligent actions. Since government immunity can also play a role in these types of car accidents, you’ll want to follow the right steps to protect your legal rights.
Common Causes of Police Car Accidents
A car accident with a police car is most often caused by speeding, running red lights or stop signs, wrong-way driving, or illegal maneuvers. You might be wondering, “What if a police car hit my car?” Can a police officer be held liable when their police car hits another vehicle?
Police car accidents are more complex even though the liable party can be liable for injuries and damages. Police officers are exempt from traffic laws in certain situations when lives are in danger.
If a police officer is responding to an emergency involving a car accident, in pursuit of a suspect, driving an emergency vehicle, or has their emergency lights and siren engaged, they will likely be exempt from liability in a car accident. However, if there is no valid reason for them to be using their authority in this way, they could be held liable for the injuries and financial damages they cause in auto accidents.
Steps to Take After a Police Car Accident
It’s not every day that you get into a car accident, and should that crash involve a police car, you should make sure that you protect your legal rights by performing the correct actions at the accident scene. Try to stay calm and take the following steps:
Call the Police
It may seem strange to call the police when your car accident involves police officers. However, it is a vital step to take since California Vehicle Code requires you to call the police for any accident that results in injuries, fatalities, or over $1,000 in property damage. A police report must be filed; however, due to the conflict of interest, you’ll need to have another officer from the local law enforcement agency arrive on the scene.
File a Police Report
You might be worried when you call the police to file a police report, but it is your duty as a driver to have an accident report made. This will need to be sent as evidence to your insurance company to show you were in a crash. It will also be needed by the insurance company for the officer.
Exchange Information
After calling in other officers to issue a police report, you should exchange insurance company information, driver’s license information, and contact information with the other driver involved in the crash. In addition to these items, you should get their badge number and police station. The police report filed at the scene should also contain it, but you will want to have this information as well.
Seek Immediate Medical Attention
Your health should be the top priority after any kind of accident. If you or any of your passengers are injured, notify the police that you need medical treatment. Even if you think you’re fine, you should not skip prompt medical care. You may get a clean bill of health or you may find that you have internal bleeding, a traumatic brain injury, or another serious injury that doesn’t have visible symptoms. By seeking immediate care, you’ll be establishing medical records of your injuries that can also prove your need for proper compensation through your insurance claim.
Gather Evidence
As you take these steps, you’ll naturally be compiling evidence for your accident. This will include the police report or accident report and any records of the treatments you received for your injuries. When you file an insurance claim, the more evidence you have to present to the insurance company, the better off you will be.
You’ll want to take photos of the accident scene. Videos can also help because you can pan up and down the street and capture more of the scene. The police report may not be as thorough in capturing property damage, and even if the responding officer is doing their job, you’ll want to get as many details as possible as proof for the insurance agent.
Additionally, if anyone saw what happened, see if you can get their contact information and a recorded statement. Witness testimony can be extremely helpful in an accident case.
Contact a Personal Injury Attorney
When you’re in an accident and you’ve sustained injuries, it is in your best interest to speak with an attorney, especially when the other driver is a police officer. Additionally, the insurance company and its insurance adjusters may make the path to receiving compensation even more difficult.
You may even be blamed for some of the fault in this collision, and with a personal injury attorney who understands each law that pertains to these events, you’ll have an advocate.
Who Is At Fault in Auto Accidents Involving Police Cars?
In any accident, determining fault is an important step as the insurance company needs to know who is liable. Unfortunately, when the other vehicle involved in an accident is a police car, California law can become murky.
Establishing negligence is an important step to take but when the police are the other party, you must prove that the actions they took either violated established procedures or were reckless in nature. The police have a responsibility to prevent pursuit-related accidents. Officers are comprehensively trained and policies for pursuit are clearly established in law enforcement agencies to keep the public safe. When these policies are not obeyed, it may mean that the officer and the agency are liable.
The only way to prove the fault of an officer of the police force is to make sure you take the steps mentioned above to document your claim. Police reports, witnesses, medical bills, and photos of your vehicle damage are just some of the items that can help in this process. Working with an attorney also helps you protect your rights while obtaining access to someone who can identify liable parties, negotiate, and pursue litigation within the statute of limitations.
Should You Seek Compensation Through Your Own Insurance Company?
Injured people in these circumstances often wonder if they need to use their health insurance or go through their insurer. While you have a duty to report an accident to your insurer even if you weren’t at fault, filing the claim with your insurer is only advised in certain circumstances.
You may have collision coverage that will pay for the repairs, though you should ask a lawyer first. They can review the evidence you’ve documented and conduct additional investigations to gain access to traffic cameras or nearby business surveillance footage.
It may come to light that the officer was not responding to an emergency call or pursuing a criminal suspect. In those situations, the police department and the officer could be held liable for your injuries and damages. Even if they were operating as per what is allowed in their duties, it is best to speak to an attorney to determine the best course of action in your circumstances.
How to Seek Damages for Your Injuries in a Crash Involving a Police Car
It is important to remember that the police are part of a government entity. Certain steps must be taken when you report the accident, including filing a formal report of a Notice of Claim. You need to do this within six months of the crash. Additionally, the accident must have caused a specific amount of damage, a minimum of $10,000, for you to make this claim.
When you have been seriously injured in an accident, you should not have to worry about meeting all of the requirements to avoid being thrust into financial ruin. The department involved will need time to review your claim to determine their degree of fault. Naturally, many of these claims are denied, forcing injured parties who have had this type of crash to file a personal injury lawsuit.
Your medical bills may be substantial for the ambulance ride, hospital stay, surgeries, medications, assistive medical devices, and more. You may have lost income due to your injuries as well, putting additional financial strain on you and your family. Even worse, your injuries may hinder you from ever returning to your job in your former capacity, causing you to earn much less.
Fortunately, when you file a lawsuit, you can fight to recover these expenses and many others, including pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment of life, mental anguish, and more.
Do You Need a Lawyer If You’ve Been in a Car Accident with a Police Officer?
When one of the vehicles involved in your car accident is a police vehicle, it can make the process for recovering your compensation much more difficult. The bureaucratic red tape that surrounds these agencies adds complexities that don’t typically arise in an auto accident among civilian drivers.
You might be wondering if you really need to take the step to get a lawyer to represent you. Ultimately, it is one of the most important steps you’ll take after this type of wreck, especially if you have major injuries.
Here is why you need a lawyer for these types of occurrences:
Investigating and Gathering Evidence
The more parties that are involved in a wreck, the more difficult it is to determine the cause and who is at fault. The government may maintain that the officer was responding to an emergency. Your lawyer can launch an investigation and bring in expert witnesses who can reconstruct the accident to determine what happened.
They can also obtain traffic camera footage, get copies of the dash cam and body cam footage from the police, and other types of evidence. These steps are of great importance, and when victims are too severely injured to take these actions, the more time passes and the harder evidence is to find.
Determining Negligence
The biggest factor in an accident with a cop is if the officer acted negligently. Negligence must be proven to hold the officer and their department liable. This involves proving the officer had a duty of care to drive safely, even while in pursuit of a criminal. If their duty of care was found to be breached based on the evidence recovered, and that breach caused the accident that left you with injuries and damages, they could be held liable for your accident.
Calculating the Full Extent of Your Damages
After any type of collision, the extent of losses needs to be determined. Known as damages, you may have economic damages which are the exact amount of money you lost as a result of the other party’s negligence. These are easier to prove as there are bills and receipts for these items.
Non-economic damages can also be sought, but these intangible losses are harder to prove without the help of a lawyer. You may need to keep a journal detailing how your injuries impact your daily life or see specialists who can attest to your mental condition if you suffer debilitating injuries, such as disfigurement or loss of limbs.
Negotiating with Insurers
Even without police involvement, a lot of finger-pointing tends to occur when trying to recover a fair settlement. Without a lawyer, the insurer may make a quick settlement offer. It might seem like a relief and that you can quickly put this all behind you; however, you should never accept the first offer without having a lawyer take a look.
It is likely you haven’t considered the full impact of your injuries and damages. You may not realize that your injuries will have a permanent effect on your life. They may cause you to be unable to go back to work or to change careers to something much less lucrative. The crash may have far-reaching consequences for the rest of your life, and settling for the first offer is what insurers hope for because once you sign the release, you aren’t allowed to pursue more money for this claim.
Every insurance company uses these tactics and they train their agents accordingly. They sound sympathetic while looking for ways to assign more blame to you or claim they can’t provide more than the amount they offer. Victims who work with lawyers tend to have a better outcome, and while no lawyer can ever guarantee the settlement amount or how your case will turn out, they are better poised to fight for your legal rights.
Meeting the Deadlines
Another issue often arises with filing your lawsuit on time. You must act quickly after a crash with a cop to file the notice and then file the lawsuit before the statute of limitations runs out. Obtaining legal representation immediately after the accident ensures you have someone who knows about these deadlines and makes sure to meet them.
Missing the deadline could mean that you are completely barred from seeking compensation for your injuries from the cop or police department in question.
If you got into a wreck with a civilian driver, you’d have two years to file your car accident case. This time limit is shortened to six months when a government entity like the police are involved.
Handling All Communications on Your Behalf
When victims have painful injuries, they should not be stuck trying to get in touch with insurers, file reports, or navigate the legal process on their own with no experience. If you have a lawyer, then they will take over all communications on your behalf.
You won’t have to talk to the agents at the insurance company all day every day. You won’t have to call the courts to try to figure out your next steps. Instead, you can simply focus on following what your doctors have told you to do on your journey to healing.
Any accident has the ability to disrupt your life in profound ways that you may have never expected. When that accident is with a cop, it becomes far more difficult to find your way. If you have been in a crash and the driver was a cop, contact Crown & Stone Law, P.C. to schedule a free initial consultation.
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