The topic of this video is what is the difference between a driver’s exchange and an accident report. So if you’ve been involved in a car accident or a motorcycle accident at the scene of the investigation, you would have likely received a small piece of paper that was printed out to you by the police officer who investigated the accident. That is called a driver’s exchange of information. It is not the full accident report. There’s a totally separate document. So the purpose of that driver’s exchange is to give you the report number or the case number and the name of the vehicle owner, the driver and the insurance information for all of the parties involved. And it’s normally printed out by the officer, uh, in his, um, you know, in his cruiser printer. And so the purpose of that is to get you set up and going with your, uh, accident claim.
So whether it’s the bodily injuries from whatever injuries you suffered in the accident, or whether it’s simply just a property damage to help you get going, uh, contacting the appropriate insurance company to get the, to get the damage repair to your vehicle. So that’s the driver’s exchange. Now there is a second and more important document, which is called the full accident report and it’s usually four or five pages. So here in Pinellas County, Florida, if you’ve been involved in any type of accident, uh, where there’s either injuries or property damage of $500 or more than the officer is required to fill out a full accident report and you know, some are better than others. Uh, but generally speaking it goes through, it’ll list the causes of the accident. It will likely have a sketch of the accident scene with distances. If you’ve got a good officer that took some time with the direction of the roads and it will also list what citations were given.
So you may have been in an accident left, maybe you were transported to the hospital, maybe not, maybe the officer just didn’t speak to you other than than just handing you the, the drivers exchange and you had no idea whether the other driver was ticketed. You’ll see that in the accident report. So it’s a, it’s a really important piece of information in every type of case. And it allows the insurance company, most importantly to determine fault. So an insurance adjuster, after receiving the accident report and speaking to his or her insured, we’ll be able to determine fault set you up with the appropriate property damage, uh, location, collision center, whatever auto shop that they have available for you to get you going with that property damage. But on our end, in terms of pulling together the, the accident claim, it’s very important at that, um, that that adjuster gets that wreck, get set traffic crash report, reviews it and accepts liability quickly.
Now again, in Pinellas County, specifically St. Petersburg, we get these accident reports online. In fact, we subscribed to a service and we’re, we’re notified as soon as we type in that case number that is given on the driver’s exchange. We’re notified when the full accident report is ready. So, you know, we get them as soon as, as soon as they’re available, which really gives us a, a leg up on the competition and on the insurance company. So hopefully that answers the questions on the difference between a driver’s exchange and an accident report, uh, following either a car auto or a motorcycle accident.
*The above has been transcribed by a third party service and has not been checked for accuracy
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St. Petersburg Personal Injury Attorneys McQuaid & Douglas
5858 Central Ave suite a, St. Petersburg, FL (727) 381-2300
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