The Law and Road Traffic Accidents
The roads can be a dangerous place and it’s inevitable that road accidents will occur. While you might be lucky enough not to be involved in a road accident throughout your driving life, it is still important to know how to deal with the situation should it ever arise and so avoid falling foul of the law.
If you are ever involved in a road accident, and you are the driver of a vehicle involved, then it is important to remain at the scene of the accident for a reasonable length of time, especially if someone other than yourself has been injured, or if damage has been caused to another vehicle or someone’s property, or if an animal has been killed or injured.
It is also important to obtain the names, addresses and telephone numbers of any other drivers or pedestrians involved in the accident, as well as those of any witnesses. Also ask drivers for details of their car insurance policies, including their policy numbers if available. If you are not the owner of a car involved in an accident, then you must also supply full details of the legal owner. If details are not exchanged at the scene of the accident, then the accident must be reported at a police station or to a police officer as soon as possible within twenty-four hours of the accident occurring.
If someone else has been injured in the accident you must produce your certificate of insurance should anyone request it, and in any case within seven days to a nominated police station. You should still report the accident to a police station within twenty-four hours if the police are not present at the scene and no details have been exchanged. Reporting an accident to the police must be made in person; it cannot be done over the telephone or by email and you cannot ask someone else to report it on your behalf.
Even if no-one is hurt, you may still have to produce your insurance details if someone holds you responsible for causing an accident and they have sufficient grounds to do so. This request can be made later and not necessarily at the time of the accident, and a failure to provide that information without a reasonable excuse is also an offence.
Failing to follow these steps can result in you inadvertently breaking the law, and could see you committing two offences: failing to stop and failing to report. It is possible to be guilty of one or both offences and penalties incurred include a maximum fine of ?5000 and five to ten penalty points being added to your driving licence. A Court also has the power to disqualify you from driving for either offence and is likely to do so where both offences are committed on the same occasion. All of these sanctions can have a serious effect on future car insurance premiums.
If you are involved in an accident and are making a claim on your car insurance policy, in addition to the above steps it can often be beneficial to draw a diagram of the accident scene. Your diagram should show as much detail as possible about the accident, including the position of all cars involved in the accident both before and after it occurred, speeds and distances of vehicles, road names and layouts, location of witnesses, obstructions to yours’ or any other road users’ view and anything else you feel may have contributed to the accident occurring, such as the road surface conditions — wet, icy, etc — visibility and light levels at the time of the accident.
It will also usually be a condition of your car insurance policy that you report any accident to them within a reasonable time, even if you do not want to process a claim on your policy. Furthermore, regardless of who is to blame for the accident, you should never admit liability or blame or make an offer of payment to another party. However, should anyone else do so, then it should be noted and reported to your insurance company.
By not disclosing an accident to your insurer, it could give your insurance company the right to withhold cover in the event of any future accidents, or could even see the cancellation of your policy and the right to have insurance cover refused in the future.
Daniel Collins writes on a number of topics on behalf of a digital marketing agency and a variety of clients. As such, this article is to be considered a professional piece with business interests in mind.
