Determining fault in a car accident is essential for resolving insurance claims and even personal injury lawsuits. The parties involved in the car accident often have conflicting accounts of what happened, confusing police officers investigating the accident scene, insurance adjusters, and even lawyers.
Video footage can play an essential role in a car accident investigation. Whether it is camera footage from a bystander’s smartphone or traffic camera video footage, these images can help authorities determine how the accident occurred and who is at fault.
If you have been hurt in a car accident, you may need camera footage to support your case if you file a claim or pursue a lawsuit. Let’s discuss the importance of car accident video footage and how it can help your case.
Why is Video Footage Important?
Camera footage of your car accident is a crucial piece of evidence. It represents unbiased facts about the collision. In personal injury cases, traffic camera footage is often used to establish liability, determine fault, and support claims for compensation for legal damages.
Obtaining footage from traffic cameras, witness smartphones, or nearby surveillance cameras could strengthen your case and increase your chances of securing financial compensation.
Types of Video Footage That Can Be Helpful
Camera footage of the car accident could come from many sources. This video evidence could be found on traffic cameras, security cameras at nearby businesses, dashcams in other vehicles near the accident scene, or smartphone video recordings from witnesses.
Dashcams are becoming more popular as they are ideal for protecting safe drivers from blame in car accidents. Acquiring dashcam footage from your vehicle or another car that filmed the crash could do wonders for your case.
Identifying Potential Sources of Video Footage
The key to using video footage as evidence for a claim or lawsuit is to find it. For any given car accident, numerous camera sources could have recorded the event. However, these sources are not always readily available to claimants and their lawyers.
Here are some strategies to identify potential sources of camera footage for your car accident case.
Surveying the Accident Scene
Your priority is to observe the scene of the accident in the immediate aftermath. Look around for intersections, nearby businesses, bystanders who are looking on, and nearby vehicles. As you survey the scene, you may notice nearby traffic cameras that are pointed in the direction of the collision.
If there are witnesses, speak to them to ask if anyone recorded a video of the car accident. You should also talk to other drivers involved in the crash or those who have stopped because they witnessed it. These individuals may have had a dash cam recording the event that could provide valuable camera footage.
Before leaving the scene, note your surroundings to ensure you locate any potential sources of footage that may support your car accident case.
Contacting Businesses and Residents
If the car accident occurs near commercial buildings or residential properties, these could be additional sources of video evidence. Contact these businesses or residents to ask if they have surveillance cameras on their properties that may have captured the event. Surveillance camera footage can be useful evidence in your case, even if it wasn’t pointed directly at the collision.
Checking with Government Agencies
Government entities could manage other sources of surveillance footage. For example, the Department of Transportation would be in charge of traffic camera videos. You could contact the local department office to get traffic camera footage from the time of your car accident. Red light cameras may even record the event if it occurred near an intersection.
Police departments will also have access to traffic camera footage for their investigation. Plus, if a police vehicle was near the site of the accident when it happened, they could have helpful dash cam footage.
Even body camera footage could be valuable if something happened during the accident investigation that would prove fault, such as the other driver apologizing or admitting to wrongdoing while speaking to the officer.
How to Obtain Camera Footage
Now that you have identified potential footage sources of your accident, you must know how to obtain the videos to support your claim or lawsuit. Let’s discuss some strategies to obtain videos of the car crash.
Making Informal Requests
An informal approach may work when requesting surveillance cameras installed by businesses, residents, or witnesses. Often, people want to help as much as possible when an accident occurs, so if they can clarify how the crash happened, they will.
You could politely ask for their surveillance video and emphasize the importance of acting quickly before the new recordings overwrite the accident footage.
Sending Preservation Letters
A preservation letter is a formal request sent by the claimant’s legal team to a party with access to evidence. Usually, this is the at-fault party. They may have video footage of your car accident implicating them, which means destroying or losing it would benefit them.
You and your attorney can craft a preservation of evidence letter before filing a lawsuit to protect this data so it can be used in your legal claim.
Formal Legal Requests and Subpoenas
Suppose an informal request is unsuccessful, and you still need to obtain traffic camera footage or a smartphone video from another party. In that case, an attorney can help via formal requests or subpoenas. These are legal orders to provide evidence to the requesting parties in car accident cases.
Although obtaining traffic camera footage from a government agency may not require this extra step, it is often used to get video evidence from security cameras or private citizens.
Using Video Footage in Your Claim
You now have critical evidence that can strengthen your case, whether you are using it for claims with insurance companies or personal injury cases. You must understand how to use this footage of a car accident effectively to support your claim.
Analyzing the Footage
First, you need to analyze the footage. Watch the video multiple times to understand the sequence of events. You should also bring this footage to accident reconstruction specialists to help them determine liability for the collision. The footage combined with their testimony could be enough to prove fault.
Presenting the Footage as Evidence
The video footage will also be crucial evidence during settlement negotiations or court proceedings. It can be submitted to the judge, jury, or mediator to demonstrate that the other driver was at fault for the accident.
The Role of a Personal Injury Lawyer
An experienced lawyer is your best chance of resolving your legal claim successfully. The right personal injury law firm specializing in car accidents can build a compelling case that increases your chances of obtaining compensation for legal damages. Here are several ways your attorney can help after a car accident.
Identifying and Securing Video Evidence
As a private citizen, you may not have the means or connections to get traffic camera footage or other video sources for evidence. A legal representative, on the other hand, can identify and secure video evidence from government agencies or reluctant parties.
As a result, they can strengthen your claim by gathering footage and other evidence, such as police reports and witness statements, that will help establish liability.
Using Video Footage to Build a Strong Case
Working with a car crash attorney will maximize your chances of a successful outcome. Your lawyer knows how to secure traffic camera footage or other sources of video evidence and use that information to build a strong case.
Through their connections, they can work with experts to reconstruct the crash scene with this footage and create an accurate car accident narrative. Then, it will be easier to prove fault and negotiate for fair compensation for injuries and legal damages suffered.
Secure Expert Legal Assistance!
Obtaining video footage of your car accident can be a complex task. If you want the best chance of winning maximum compensation from your claim or lawsuit, footage of the car wreck could be the evidence you need to secure victory.
If you are unsure how to secure footage from the police department, government agencies, witnesses, or nearby residents, a car accident attorney will assist you.
The team at Rosenfeld Injury Lawyers knows how to find and secure every video recording of your collision, whether body cameras, red light cameras, dash cams, or nearby surveillance cameras captured it. We also offer a free consultation so you can ask questions about your case.
Call our office today at 888-424-5757 or complete the online form to book a free consultation with a car accident attorney in Chicago.