Accident Investigation and Empathic Communications - The Heart and Soul of Claims Management and Containment
By Carmen Daecher

Whenever an accident occurs, especially one that involved major loss, we know that it is important to understand what happened and start to manage the claim as soon as possible. How and when this is done becomes very important towards the successful management of each claim.

Any accident should be reported to you as soon as possible after the accident. Once you know about it, it is fundamentally important to have the accident completely and properly investigated immediately. To accomplish this successfully, a clear and logical process and trained people are necessary. What to look for, how to collect it, how to follow on leads, etc., requires expertise that is critical in many claim situations. We will discuss scene investigation from a claims management perspective as part of our presentation.

Collecting evidence at the scene; understanding damage to vehicles and property; accurately defining injuries and causes of death; and understanding who may have been witnesses to the accident are vital to know as quickly as possible. Immediately dispatching skilled and trained people to collect such evidence is a critical first step.

Evidence tells an objective story about an accident. To properly collect, identify, and analyze such evidence is critical to forming verifiable opinions about what happened and what may have caused an accident.

In most cases, by the time you arrive at the scene, the evidence will be in different locations, vehicles will be in tow yards; the injured will be in hospitals and other locations; and whatever is left at the accident locations remains there. To know how to collect evidence at accident scenes, from vehicles, and through injury reports is important. Equally so, to understand how they relate to one another is important. Only after evidence is collected can the relationship among evidence be established. Therefore, complete collection of evidence is the first step towards understanding how an accident occurred.

After evidence is collected, to understand what it means is the next step. Tire marks, depending upon their type, can tell many different stories. The condition of lamp filaments also offers insightful clues to conditions at the time of an accident. Non-impact damage to vehicles and patterns of damage to vehicles and other objects provide a basis for understanding where first contact occurred and how force is directed through an object. And, injuries are a pattern of force interacting upon occupants of vehicles. They also help understand the motion and position of objects within vehicles when they are involved in an accident.

Proper collection of roadway geometric and regulatory data is also important towards understanding whether defects could have contributed immediately after an accident, since actual conditions can change. Historical data can be collected and might be important towards understanding if previous knowledge of such defects were known by the owner of the roadway or facility.

Operations information, if a commercial vehicle is involved, is also vitally important towards understanding whether policies or practices of the organization might have contributed to driver error or vehicle failure resulting in an accident. To collect and understand such issues can be important in determining liability and cause.

This evidence, along with police reports and witness statements provide a strong foundation for forming opinions which can withstand tests of cross examination. And, if the evidence is compelling enough, it can help jurors and others understand how an accident happened and the dynamics of what occurred during the accident.

After the initial attempt to collect information is finished, persistent follow-up to "fill in the gaps" with missing information must be accomplished.

As a result of every accident, and especially serious or catastrophic ones, we attempt to replace what is lost or damaged, and ease the pain associated with the event. It is fundamental to remember that we relate to fellow human beings when talking about compensation for injury, property damage, etc. This means that we must be sensitive to and more directly address the trauma and the sense of loss associated with an accident. This takes on many forms during the course of the claim; it is not simply money based.

To understand how an accident has affected the people most closely involved to it requires direct and immediate communication by skilled professionals. To understand the true needs of claimants or claimant families immediately after a loss, no matter how non-monetary they may be, is to genuinely address the needs of those individuals at a most critical time.

To wait for a week or two before such a contact is made is contrary to demonstrating genuine concern. To believe that money is the only issue around which a claimant or a claimant's family is concerned is wrong. Thus, immediate contact as soon as possible after the loss is essential towards demonstrating to victims that your company recognizes that an event has occurred and that it genuinely cares for those involved because of the loss felt by the victims - not simply because of who is at fault or how much it may cost. This approach, if successfully initiated, establishes a positive and trusting relationship between the claimant and you. With continued communication and management of expectations, you can accomplish a fair and equitable closure to the claim for the victim - and for yourself. You will also feel more positive about what you have done as a claims professional within your organization because of this approach which fundamentally acknowledges people as the primary issue and not dollars.

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