What do I do right after a car accident?

Get safe, then get facts. The library’s page on the minutes after a crash was built by people who stood exactly where you are, and its first line is not about what to say.

Safety first, and the pages argue about one part of it. Get safe, then get facts says: if anyone is hurt, or might be, call 911 in the United States, 999 in the UK, your local emergency number elsewhere, before anything else. Then get out of the way of traffic, and here the people argue, so take both halves: if you can reach a genuinely safe place, behind a barrier, well off the road, go there, because a stopped car gets hit again; but on a motorway or anywhere cars are still passing fast with nowhere safe to stand, stay in the car with your belt on and hazards flashing, because the metal box protects you and the shoulder does not. Get out regardless if the car is on fire or in another immediate danger. Do not move anyone who may have a neck or back injury unless they are in danger where they lie. And two things adrenaline does: it hides pain, so a broken bone can show up later, once weight goes on the limb, and other injuries days after, and it makes you say I’m fine to everyone who asks. Say you do not know yet, and see a doctor even if you walked away; six separate cautions there say I’m fine at the roadside gets quoted back later.

Facts, not blame. The same page: photos before anything moves, the other driver’s name, plate, insurer and policy number, witnesses. Say what happened and not whose fault it was, and sign nothing from the other driver. The page carries the argument about admitting fault with both sides and no winner. One side says you do not have the facts at the roadside and an adjuster in those conversations says a verbal admission means nothing to that process while a described mistake can cost you for years. The other says there are crashes where the facts are not in doubt, you reversed into a parked car, and a rule telling people to go quiet about obvious negligence teaches something ugly. Both sides accept the ground: I’m sorry, are you hurt? is sympathy and belongs to everyone; sorry, I didn’t see the light is a different sentence. Apology laws and fault-sharing rules differ by state and country.

What the car kit is for. The first-aid kit is three kits says the car kit is the one built for a crash: gloves, a blanket, and the serious-bleeding supplies only if you have done the short course that teaches them. Its safety line, from people who work in emergency care: a kit is not a course. In any serious injury the first move is the emergency number and the second is to do only what you have been trained to do, press hard on heavy bleeding, cool a burn under running water, keep the person still and warm. Do not move someone from a crashed car unless it is on fire or in other immediate danger, because moving a spinal injury can paralyse.

Afterwards, the sum. If the repair costs what the car is worth, it is not a repair is for the quote on the counter: write the repair cost next to what the car would sell for today, and if they are close, the repair is a second purchase of a car you already own. Check the diagnosis first, because theirs were wrong. Its lines from US guidance: there is no general right to return a car once you have signed, and handing a financed car back to the lender does not hand back the debt.

Who this is not for, in the crash page’s own words. Anyone hurt now, who has one job. Anyone outside the United States, whose rules on reporting, apologies and fault differ. Anyone whose other driver fled or had no insurance, which the page names as questions its people did not answer and which both start with a call to your own insurer. And anyone reading from a hospital bed, for whom the only line that matters is: sign nothing from the other side, and talk to your own insurer first.