Reading the forum tonight and saw a fender bender situation and was curious, when involved in an accident, do you always call the police?
Luckily, I have never been in an accident of any type that was my fault, but have been rear ended and had a few other relatively minor accidents over the years, the other person always being at fault. Anyways, growing up, my Dad said no less than 1,000 times to always call 911 and get a police report in these situations.
I've always followed this rule and a few times, the Officer seemed annoyed a few times (I think I just caught some lazy cops as they didn't want to spend the time writing anything up), but I've never had any issues and always got my vehicles taken care of, sometimes through insurance, sometimes the person paid out of pocket.
Curious if most here follow this line of thinking? From casual conversations, I've heard friends on both sides of getting a report or just working with the person that hit them. I just don't trust people hahaha. I remember one time, I got hit and my bumper was cracked and the person wanted to handle it between the two of us and suggested it might be a few hundred dollars, LOL that was a red flag, and I'm sure if I wouldn't have gotten a report, when the repair estimate came in at $2K+ (turned out to be more than just the bumper), they might have "remembered differently".
As a frame of reference, I live in a large Metro area, so certainly not the trustiest bunch of people here versus say a nice small town.
This might be better suited as a "Poll" (never created one before), but open to hearing everyone's thoughts.
Also, on this same note, what are your best practices or things you always do in this situation?
I had a friend get "hit and run", so I recall the last time I got hit, I got out of the vehicle and made sure to snap a quick picture of the license plate on the vehicle that hit me.