After a car accident in Los Angeles, six things matter on day one. Get somewhere safe and call 911. Photograph the scene and collect witness names before people drive off. Exchange information without arguing about fault. See a doctor the same day, even if you feel alright. Tell your own insurance company what happened. And file a DMV form SR-1 within 10 days if anyone was hurt or the property damage runs past $1,000. Everything else can wait until tomorrow.
Those six cannot.
The rest of this guide is about why, and about the two weeks that follow, where most claims are quietly won or lost. Insurance companies form an opinion of a claim early, and they build it out of the collision report, the first medical record, and whatever you said on the phone before you knew how hurt you were. That is not fair. It is predictable, though, and predictable is something you can plan around.
At the scene: safety first, then evidence
Move out of the traffic lane if the car still drives and nobody is seriously hurt. On surface streets that means the shoulder or a parking lot. On the 101, the 405 or the 118 it means getting off the roadway entirely, because standing in a live lane after a collision is more dangerous than the collision usually was. If the car will not move, leave it. Hazard lights on, everybody behind a barrier.
Call 911 even when the crash looks minor. Two useful things come out of that call: paramedics who can document injuries while you are still standing there, and an officer who writes a report. LAPD officers handle collisions on city streets, with follow up through the traffic divisions, Valley, West, Central and South. The California Highway Patrol has the freeways, and outside city limits the Sheriff’s Department responds. On a busy night, for a property damage only crash, you may be told nobody is coming. You can file a counter report at a station afterward.
What to say and what not to say
Say what you have to say. Name, license, registration, insurance. Check on the other people. Answer an officer’s factual questions honestly.
Then stop talking.
Do not apologize. Do not say “I didn’t see you.” Do not guess at speeds or distances. People apologize as a reflex when someone in front of them is upset, and eleven months later that reflex shows up as a quoted line in a claim file. You also do not yet know what happened. In most of the files we open, something was going on that neither driver registered at the time: a lane change two seconds earlier, a truck parked where it blocked the sightline.
Injuries work the same way. “I’m fine” is one of the more expensive sentences a person can say at a crash scene, because adrenaline hides a neck injury or a concussion for hours. Say you are not sure yet and plan to be checked out.
Photographs and witnesses
Take more photographs than seems reasonable.
- All vehicles from four corners, close on the damage and wide enough to show where the cars came to rest.
- Skid marks, debris, broken glass, the signal or stop sign, lane markings, anything blocking a view.
- The other driver’s license, insurance card and plate.
- Your visible injuries that day, then again a few days later when the bruising comes up.
- A slow video pan across the whole intersection.
Witnesses matter as much as anything else you will collect, and they are gone in about four minutes. Ask everyone who stopped for a name and a cell number. One neutral person who saw the light color can settle a dispute that would otherwise be your word against another driver’s. Look up while you are at it. Gas stations and storefronts run cameras that record over themselves inside two weeks, so write the address down the same day.
Getting the traffic collision report
An officer’s report is not the final word on fault, and it does not come into evidence at trial on its own. Insurance companies still lean on it heavily. Before you leave the scene, ask for the report number and the officer’s name and serial number.
LAPD reports generally become available a week or two later, through the department’s records process or the traffic division that handled the crash. CHP reports come from the area office that responded. Read all of it when yours arrives. There is a hand-drawn diagram with the vehicles numbered and arrows for direction of travel, a narrative in flat police prose, boxes listing each party and their insurance, and a line where the officer names the violation he believes occurred. The file usually shows at least one thing off: reversed party numbers, a wrong direction of travel, a witness who talked at the curb and never made it onto the page. Some of that can be corrected through the reporting officer, far more easily in month one than after a denial.
The DMV SR-1: 10 days, no exceptions
This is the deadline almost nobody has heard of. Under Vehicle Code 16000, a driver in a California crash causing injury or death, or more than $1,000 in damage to any one person’s property, must file a report of traffic accident, form SR-1 with the DMV within 10 days. It applies whether or not police came, and it is separate from telling your insurance company.
Skipping it does not produce a lawsuit. It produces a suspended license. One bumper cover on a late model car can pass $1,000 at a Los Angeles body shop, so assume the form applies.
See a doctor the same day
If you take one thing from this page, take this one. Be seen the day of the crash, or the next morning at the latest. Urgent care, your own doctor, an emergency room, any of them will do. Which door you walk through matters far less than the date on the record.
Two reasons. Concussions, disc injuries and internal bleeding do not always announce themselves in the first hours. And the date of your first visit anchors the whole claim: let two weeks go by and the insurance company will argue that whatever hurts came from somewhere else, then repeat that argument in every letter and every deposition until the case ends.
The same logic runs through the rest of your treatment. Go to the appointments. Finish the physical therapy. Someone who stops treating for a month because work got busy will later read that the month proves the injury resolved. Head injuries deserve extra attention, since memory trouble, light sensitivity and a short fuse tend to surface days later and get blamed on stress. Our page on brain injury claims covers what those cases need.
Tell every provider about every symptom, not only the one that hurts most. A shoulder that goes unmentioned for six weeks because your back was screaming becomes, in the defense version, an injury you invented.
Insurance: your company and the other driver’s
Report the crash to your own insurer promptly. Your policy requires your cooperation, and a long silence can be treated as a breach of it. Keep it factual: date, place, vehicles, and that you are being evaluated. You may also have coverage you have forgotten buying. Medical payments coverage, if you purchased it, pays medical bills regardless of fault. Uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage, which insurers must offer under Insurance Code 11580.2, protects you when the driver who hit you carries California’s minimum limits of $30,000 per person, or nothing at all. In this county that coverage decides more cases than the other driver’s policy does.
The other driver’s insurance company is a different animal. Someone from that office will call quickly, often within a day or two, and will be perfectly pleasant. What they want is a recorded statement.
You are not required to give one. No statute, no rule, and no term of your own policy obligates you to be recorded by a company that insures someone else. That call is a short set of questions built to produce quotable answers before you know how badly you are hurt. “A little better” on day three becomes an argument on day three hundred. Decline politely, or hand it to a lawyer.
Treat an early settlement offer the same way. Money offered in the first two weeks arrives before anyone knows whether you need an MRI, and cashing it closes the claim for good.
Stay off social media
Do not post about the crash. Do not post photos of yourself dancing at a cousin’s wedding while you are treating for a back injury. Defense lawyers look, and a smiling photograph with no context gets used to suggest that someone in real pain is exaggerating. Set the accounts to private and go quiet until the claim is resolved.
Keep a folder, and keep it simple
One folder, or one album on your phone. The report number, the SR-1 confirmation, photographs, witness numbers, every bill and record, mileage to appointments, receipts, proof of the work you missed. Once a week, write a few sentences about what hurt and what you could not do.
Written that week, the note is evidence. Reconstructed a year later from memory, it is a guess.
When to call a lawyer, and what a consultation involves
A scraped bumper with nobody hurt does not need an attorney. Call one when an injury takes more than a single visit, when fault is disputed, when a commercial, rideshare or government vehicle was involved, when the other driver had no insurance, or when a claim has been denied or gone quiet. Cases involving motorcycle riders, people on foot and Uber and Lyft vehicles carry their own coverage rules and deserve a call early.
A free consultation here is a conversation, usually 20 to 30 minutes, by phone or video, at your home, or at the hospital when getting out is hard. You describe what happened. We tell you which deadlines are running, what treatment or coverage problems we can see from here, and whether you need a lawyer at all. Sometimes the honest answer is that you do not. You can also read about how we work, car accident claims in California, and representation in Los Angeles.
Key points
- Call 911, photograph everything, and get witness names before anyone leaves the scene.
- File the DMV SR-1 within 10 days if anyone was hurt or damage exceeds $1,000, or risk a license suspension.
- Be examined the same day, and do not let gaps open in your treatment.
- Report to your own insurer, but decline a recorded statement to the other driver’s.
- Keep one folder with records, bills, wage loss and a weekly note about your symptoms.
- The deadline to file a lawsuit in California is generally two years from the date of injury under Code of Civil Procedure 335.1.
Frequently asked questions
Do I have to call the police for a minor crash in Los Angeles?
Police are not always dispatched to property damage only collisions, but call anyway. If officers do not respond, file a counter report at a station afterward. The DMV SR-1 requirement is separate and applies either way.
The other driver’s insurance company keeps calling. Do I have to talk to them?
No. Nothing obligates you to give a recorded statement to a company that insures someone else. Decline, give basic identifying information only, or refer them to your attorney. Your own insurer is a separate matter, since your policy requires you to cooperate with it.
What if the crash was partly my fault?
California follows pure comparative negligence, from Li v. Yellow Cab. Your recovery is reduced by your percentage of fault rather than barred, so someone found 30 percent responsible still recovers 70 percent of their damages. The number an insurer floats early binds no one.
How long do I have to bring a claim?
Generally two years from the date of injury under Code of Civil Procedure 335.1. Where a government entity is involved, a city bus for example, a written claim has to be presented within six months under Government Code 911.2. That shorter one is the deadline people miss.
If you were hurt in a crash anywhere in Los Angeles County, we are glad to talk it through, whether or not you hire anyone. Call Manoukian Law Firm at (818) 818-5031 or use our contact page. Consultations are free, calls are answered around the clock, we speak English, Spanish and Armenian, and there is no fee unless we recover for you.
