The Atlanta Traveler

I had never heard of this before, but did you know that in some rural areas around Atlanta, the police won’t come out to a scene of car accidents if they consider the accident to be minor? It happened to me? I was driving out of my subdivision, minding my own business, when this sweet elderly lady swerved and hit me on my driver’s side. My driver’s side mirror flew off the car, and the car accident scared me to death, but I was not hurt. I hate car accidents!

I called the Georgia Highway Patrol, and they asked me if anyone was hurt. “No.” Did any of the cars need to be towed? “No.” Well, they then told me to get the lady’s information (name, phone number, license, insurance policy number, etc.,) and come to the department in the morning to complete an accident report. What? I made the Scooby Doo sound,  and looked confused. “hrhmmm?”  I had never heard of do-it-yourself reports for car accidents! I felt as though something was wrong with the scenario. What if we couldn’t reach an agreement as to who hit whom? What if the little old lady had a bout of road rage in the middle of the street?

I did go and complete the car accident report, but luckily the lady had insurance, and I was in a rental the next morning. My car was fixed in about two days. If you are traveling around Atlanta (maybe in Atlanta, too) don’t be surprised if you are asked to complete your own accident report. Here is the information that you would have to get from the other party.

• Name
• Address
• Phone number
• Insurance policy number
• Phone number of insurance company
• Licence number
• Type of vehicle (year, model, and make)
• Time the accident occurred
• Street where the accident occurred

If you have a camera phone, take a picture of the damage and/or of the position of the cars. I wish that I’d thought to do that! You will also need to write a description of what happened during the accident.

Photo by Shrff14/Nick,  Flickr Creative Commons License

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