What Is Some Evidence You Collect for Distracted Driving Accidents?

Some of the evidence you cannot get until you litigate. We’ll always look for the initial evidence. So a police report will sometimes show people can admit to the police, “Yeah, I was looking at my phone, or Sorry, I was looking down,” whatever it may be. So, a police report is the first place to start. Then we go to witness testimony. Were there any eyewitnesses who saw the wreck? Did they notice anything with the driver? Did they hear the driver say anything after the wreck? We’ll look for video evidence; dash cam video is becoming more common and is super valuable to us to kind of see what happened in a wreck; video footage from local nearby businesses can sometimes show a wreck, and that can be helpful. Where you get the really good evidence, though, is after you litigate. I mean, we can subpoena phone records, and I can see exactly when the last time that person texted and compare it with the police report to see if they were actually on their phone texting right around the wreck. Certainly, go through the depositions that I just described where we can, you know, talk to the people involved and try to get them to admit to what caused the wreck; that is all about framing. You can’t just say like, “Well, were you distracted when you hit my client.” I mean, that doesn’t do any good. You have to kind of walk them into it clearly. When you rear end someone, it’s almost always due to a distraction of some sort, and so there’s some nuance to it, But those depositions, that’s the fun stuff as a lawyer, is to be able to get that evidence out that they don’t want to share and you get them to anyways.