Forensic Car Accident Investigators: Their Role in a Personal Injury Claim

If you were injured in a car accident, you may have heard about forensic accident investigators from your personal injury lawyer, like a personal injury lawyer Fort Collins CO. However, you may be unclear about what these investigators do and how they might help your case. In fact, such investigators can be crucial to a case and may make it possible for you to recover damages from the party responsible for causing the car accident.

When necessary, attorneys work with forensic accident investigators when building a case on behalf of their clients. Not every law firm or personal injury lawyer has a professional network that includes these specialists, but at Cannon Hadfield Stieben & Doutt, LLC, our years of experience have demonstrated their importance.

What Does a Forensic Car Accident Investigator Do?

After a car accident, particularly when it results in serious or fatal injuries for at least one of the drivers or passengers, there may be a question of liability. Even in cases where it seems very clear who was at fault for causing the accident, the at-fault party’s insurance company may deny liability. This is because they do not want to pay out money, even to very deserving victims.

One of our primary missions is to establish that our clients were not at fault and that they deserve the maximum possible amount of compensation from the party who caused the accident. A forensic car accident investigator can help your case by achieving the following:

• Visit the accident scene and document pertinent information such as the location and length of skid marks to determine when drivers began braking or did not use their vehicle’s brakes. This can show which driver took evasive action and when.
• Identify road hazards that could have contributed to the accident such as major potholes, ice, debris, and other potential issues. In some cases, this results in naming an additional defendant such as the municipality responsible for maintaining road safety.
• Examine the vehicles involved to determine who hit who and at approximately what speed and from what direction. This type of physical evidence can show that the other driver was not accurate or truthful in their account of what happened.
• Interview the accident witnesses. If you were seriously injured in the accident, it may not have been practical for you to collect witness statements, or even to get their contact information. By using a variety of methods, a trained forensic car accident investigator can often track down witnesses with little to no information to go on. The investigator can interview each witness and videotape their account of what happened. Witness corroboration can boost a personal injury case when the at-fault party refuses to accept responsibility.

Victims of personal injury accidents deserve compensation from those responsible. Without such compensation, they will have to pay for their own injury and treatment costs. Even if they have health insurance, it may not be enough and their rates will likely go up significantly, despite the fact they didn’t cause the accident. Contact an attorney today.

Thanks to our friends and contributors from Cannon, Hadfield, Stieben & Doutt, LLC for their insight car accident cases.