When you get hurt in a car accident caused by another driver’s negligence, you may seek financial recovery for your medical bills, lost income, and pain and suffering through an insurance claim or lawsuit. However, proving the other driver’s fault for the crash and your right to compensation in a car accident claim may depend on various kinds of evidence. One of the most common types of evidence used in car accident cases includes photographic evidence, which can objectively document details of the crash scene. As a result, photos may provide the critical evidence you need to obtain financial relief for your injuries and losses.
Why Photographic Evidence Matters
Photographic evidence often plays a critical role in car accident cases because photos can capture details that parties may overlook, forget, or dispute in an insurance claim or lawsuit. Photographic evidence can provide information that parties usually cannot dispute, as opposed to testimony from the parties or witnesses, which may give conflicting accounts of what happened in a crash. Photos can supply key evidence in a car accident case, such as the nature of the damage suffered by the vehicles in the crash, the traffic controls at the scene, or the positions of the cars after the collision. Accident reconstruction experts can use accident scene photos to help develop their reports or visual recreations of the accident.
What to Photograph After a Car Accident
At a crash scene, drivers and passengers can use their cell phones to photograph essential details, such as:
- Vehicle damage, including wide shots of the cars and close-ups of areas of damage, which can reveal details such as paint that scraped off from another vehicle
- Crash debris, such as body panels, smashed headlight covers, or broken glass
- Skid marks on the road
- Traffic controls, including road lines, road signs, speed limit signs, stop/yield signs, and traffic lights
- Road and weather conditions (i.e., black ice or potholes on the road, or rainy, snowy, or foggy weather)
- The surrounding area, including any visual obstructions for any driver
- Visible injuries
Crash victims should remember to take multiple photos of specific details from different angles and perspectives, which can help accident reconstruction experts, insurance adjusters, and juries evaluate the evidence.
How Photographic Evidence Strengthens Your Claim
As Missouri follows the comparative negligence rule in car accident claims, photos can help identify the parties at fault for a car crash and assign percentages of fault to each responsible party. Photographic evidence can strengthen your claim when it corroborates your recollection of the accident or contradicts details of the other driver’s account of the accident. Photos can also help document the extent of the damage your vehicle sustained, which can prove your property damage claim and corroborate your testimony regarding the severity of your injuries if your vehicle sustained significant damage. Photographic evidence may help you resolve your car accident claim more efficiently by giving an insurance company incontrovertible proof of liability or damages.
The Role of an Attorney in Using Photographic Evidence
When you hire a car accident attorney to represent you, they can use photographic evidence during settlement negotiations or trial to corroborate or bolster your allegations about what occurred in the accident or the property damage and injuries you sustained, or to directly contradict the other driver’s claims or the insurance company’s assertions. An attorney can also work with accident reconstruction experts to use accident scene photos to develop a compelling narrative of the crash.
Contact a Car Accident Lawyer Today
After getting into a Missouri car accident, one of the first things you can do to help put you in a favorable position to Contact Dreyer & Tinney Law Firm today for a free, no-obligation consultation with a personal injury attorney to learn how photographic evidence can strengthen your claim to financial compensation for injuries and property damage you suffered in a car crash in Missouri.