What you should do when you see a car accident

A car accident is happening in front of you. What will you do? what should you do? Will you just drive away or will you stop and see if you can assist? There are some people that will just pass without worrying about the people in the vehicles. And, then there are the people that will put themselves in danger to try to assist the people in a car accident.

There are a couple of things that you should do when you see a car accident. Things that you can do to assist the people in the vehicles without putting yourself in danger.

Remember these, next time when you are witnessing a car accident:

Make sure that you are safe first, then stop

The first and most important thing that you can do, is to make sure that you are safe before you are stopping to assist. Make sure that your vehicle is parked in a safe zone and that you are turning on your hazard light.

This is a mistake that so many people are making when they came across a car accident. They are stopping right away and run to assist. Not thinking about their safety or the safety of your family that might be with you in the car. If the accident is at night, you should make sure that you are clear from the accident area and that you are parked on the side of the road. You don’t want to make things worse or cause another car accident.

Call the emergency services

Before you are running out of your vehicle to check on the victims, you should call the emergency services first. They need to get on the scene to assist with the crash and to make sure that the flow of the traffic is monitored.

You might wonder if you should check on the victims to see if they need medical attention, but it is more important to get the right emergency services on the scene as fast as possible. This can mean the difference between life and death for them.

Check on the victims and make sure that they are safe

With the emergency services on the way, you can now go and check on the victims of the vehicles to see if they are okay and if they need some assistance. If there are small children that are scared, this might be the time now to reassure them that everything is going to be fine. Even, if it seems like there is someone deceased in the vehicle.

Don’t move someone who seriously injured

The one thing that you should not do, is to move a victim that is seriously injured. This can make their injuries worst. The only time that you can move a patient is if the vehicle is starting to burn, or when the vehicle is positioned in such a way that it can be life-threatening for the victims. And, then you should still try to move them as smooth as possible, supporting their neck and backs.

When you need to remove them from the vehicle, you should get them to safety and lie them down on a solid surface. You should then cover them with a blanket and support their neck and back until emergency services arrive. Make sure that they are out of danger before you lie them down.

Assist victims if they need immediate medical help if you are qualified

If you have medical experience, this might now be the time to see if you can assist with some minor injuries or CPR until the emergency services arrive. But, you need to have real medical experience before you can really assist anyone.

When someone thinks that they have medical knowledge, if they don’t really have, it can hurt the victim even more and put them in danger. You should make sure that you have real medical experience before you are going to assist them. When the emergency services arrive, you should make way so that they can take over. You can tell the medical team what you have done to the patient. This will make it easier for the medical team to continue.

Call the police

More than likely when you called for EMS, police were notified as well. However, if no police are on the scene, call them. The police need to come out and write up an accident report. This will tell who was at fault and if any citations were issued. The accident report will also list all witnesses and passengers in both cars.

Give a full statement to the police

Now, that everything is calmer and the emergency personnel is on the scene and the victims taking care off, you can’t climb back into your vehicle and drive off. You will need to wait until you have given a full statement to the police.

They will want to know what you have seen and what the reason for the car accident might have been. You also will need to give all your personal information if they need to contact you later on. This is especially essential to give a true and full statement when there are serious injuries or even deaths because of the accident. You can drive, once the emergency services say that you can go and that they will contact you in the future.

Things that you should not do after a car accident

There are a couple of things that you should not do during a car accident. Things that can make things just worse, putting the victims in more danger or putting yourself in danger. These are some of the things that you should not do when you witness a car accident.

• You should not assume that someone else is phoning the emergency services.
• The last thing that you should do is to move a victim if it isn’t life-threatening.
• If the vehicle is unstable, you should not remove the victims, period.
• Interfering with the medical team while they are working is something that you should avoid doing. Even if you have lots of medical experience.
• Giving a statement about what you think might have happened when you didn’t see it clearly. This can lead to a false statement and this is against the law. You should just tell what you saw and not what you think happened.

In short: What you should do when you witness an accident

To make sure that you remember what you should do when you do witness a car accident:
• Make sure that you are safe and stop on the side of the road
• Call the emergency services
• Making sure that the victims are fine
• Remove them only when their lives are in danger
• Giving medical assistance if you have medical experience until emergency services arrive
• Give a full and correct statement to the police and making sure that your personal information is correct.

When you see a car accident happen in front of your eyes, you might be in shock for a moment or two. And, then you realize that you need to do something. The one thing that is important is to know exactly what you should do and what you should not do when you see a car accident occur.

Do not put yourself or your family’s lives in danger and you should make sure that you are calling the emergency services before you are doing anything else. By knowing this info, might mean that you can save someone’s live next time when you see a car accident happen in front of you.