The first 48 hours after a Phoenix car accident

Almost nothing that decides a car accident claim happens in a courtroom. It happens in the two days after the crash, usually while the person whose case it is has a headache and no idea any of it matters.

Arizona records somewhere around 120,000 collisions a year, and the insurer on the other side of yours handles thousands of them. Its process is designed, rehearsed and running before you have finished filling in the police report. Here is what to do while that is happening.

Hour one: at the scene

If you are able to stand up and hold a phone, you can protect the case. If you are not, none of this matters and somebody else can do it later.

• Call 911 even for a minor collision. An officer's report is not the end of the liability argument, but its absence is used against you for the entire life of the claim.
• Photograph more than the damage. Both vehicles from four corners, the position of the cars before they are moved, skid marks, debris fields, traffic signals, the weather, and the other driver's plate and insurance card.
• Get names, not just numbers. Independent witnesses vanish within a week and are almost impossible to trace afterwards. A first name and a phone number in your notes app is worth more than a perfect diagram.
• Do not apologise. "I am sorry" is reflexive courtesy in Phoenix and an admission of fault in a deposition transcript.

Hour twelve: get looked at

Adrenaline is a painkiller with a twelve-hour half-life. Soft tissue injuries, concussions and disc herniations routinely present the next morning, and the single most common argument an adjuster makes is that a gap between the crash and the first medical visit proves the injury came from something else.

A 48-hour gap in treatment is worth more to a defence lawyer than a favourable police report. Close it.

Go to urgent care or an emergency department the same day. Describe every symptom, including the ones that feel too small to mention, because what is not written down on day one does not exist on day two hundred.

Hour twenty-four: the phone call

The other driver's insurer will call, usually within 48 hours, and the person calling will be genuinely pleasant. They will ask for a recorded statement "just to get your side."

You are not required to give it. That recording is taken so that a sentence you said while concussed can be played back eight months later, when your neurologist is describing a permanent injury and you once said you felt fine. Decline politely, give your name and the date of the crash, and say you will follow up in writing.

Hour forty-eight: the things not to do

• Do not post about it. A photograph of you smiling at a birthday party is the defence exhibit in almost every case that goes to trial.
• Do not accept a fast cheque. Early offers arrive before diagnosis. Accepting one closes the claim permanently, including for the surgery nobody has recommended yet.
• Do not repair or scrap the car yet if the collision was serious. The vehicle is evidence, and its data module is often the only impartial witness to speed and braking.
• Do not assume low vehicle damage means no case. Vehicle damage measures the vehicle. It does not measure a spine.

What we do in the same 48 hours

Preservation letters go out to every party who might hold footage or data. We open your own uninsured and underinsured motorist claim, which is coverage you already paid for and which most people do not know they have. And every adjuster who calls you gets our number instead.

If your crash was in the last month, the useful thing to do today is not to read more. It is to start a free case review or call, and let somebody send the letters while the footage still exists.