Since the police have not been on the scene to record minor fender-benders for years, situations where the parties cannot agree on liability have often become problematic for insurers as well as the parties themselves.

According to Viljo Kokla, product manager of Seesam’s comprehensive motor insurance, the work of claims handlers in recent years has transformed more into the work of an investigator, where in addition to the existing evidence, additional evidence must often be gathered and decisions can be made only after a thorough analysis of the evidence.

“The police have previously helped to identify the cause of the accident in most cases and recorded it on the accident form, but in situations where people have to do it themselves, formalisation and determination of the cause become a problem,” said Kokla.

He also said that during the recording of a traffic accident, the diagrams often remain vague or non-existent, making it impossible to properly determine the traffic situation and the position of the vehicles at a later date. People take exemplary photographs of the damage from various angles but forget to capture the overall scene with the positions of the vehicles, braking marks and other necessary details that would give a complete view of what happened.

“People’s own ignorance often leads to situations where they don’t want to admit their mistake, which in turn leads to disputes,” said Kokla. “The most frequently disputed damage is that caused by manoeuvres and reversing in parking lots, where it’s one person’s word against another’s. Agreements are also hard to come by in the case of accidents that happen during lane changes.”

If the explanations of the parties are contradictory and there is no proper overview of the scene, the insurer says that it is very difficult or even impossible to identify the cause after the event.

In order to ensure that accidents are recorded correctly and to avoid subsequent disputes, Seesam has compiled a short guide that you can have ready on your phone or print out and have in your car.

• Check whether anybody has been injured as a result the accident.
• Make yourself visible – turn on the emergency lights of the damaged vehicle(s), place a warning triangle on the road.
• Do not move the vehicles until the accident has been fully recorded. By moving the car, the party involved in the accident takes the risk that the actual circumstances of the accident cannot be established later and therefore the insurance will not compensate the damage or will do so only partially.
• Record your accident via avarii.ee or avarii.lkf.ee and do not forget to include a diagram and an explanation of the incident with pictures. Make sure that both parties accept the notice. This must be done by signing the form and if a signature is missing, it is essentially only the testimony of one party, which is not sufficient to prove that the other party caused the accident.
• Take pictures from up close and from afar.
• If eyewitness statements are needed, write down their names and addresses.

Contact the police (emergency services) in the following cases:

• A person has been injured or killed in the accident. Make the call even if the injury initially seems minor.
• If the parties cannot agree on who was responsible for the accident.
• If damage has been caused to a third party or to the owner of property who is not at the scene. For example, if a parked car, street light post, road sign, etc. has been damaged.
• If there has been a collision with a large animal (wolf, bear, lynx, wild boar, red deer, elk, roe deer).
• If the road accident has caused an obstruction on the road that endangers traffic or has caused environmental damage.