The Importance of Video Evidence in Auto Accident Injury Cases

Like it or not we live in an age of video, cameras are everywhere! And the video evidence from these cameras has a direct impact on personal injury cases. Video evidence can come from a variety of different sources such as doorbell cameras, passing metro buses, cruiser dash cams from a passing police patrol vehicle, dash cams from private vehicles, store cameras, gas station cameras, and on the highways we have cameras from the Ohio Department of Transportation. Accumulating all of this video evidence before it vanishes is a major component of what the personal injury attorneys at Willis, Willis & Rizzi do as we investigate accident injury cases.

For example, the Ohio Department of Transportation has a 72 hour retention policy involving their cameras. That means if someone doesn’t get to that video in the first 3 days following an auto accident it is done forever! Most commercial enterprises such as a gas station or store have their own policies which vary from store to store, and some of these enterprises will only release the video to law enforcement and not an individual.

Another huge component of the video that we seek from the time of the collision is body cam video footage from responding officers at the scene. Even in a smaller case if 3 or 4 officers are on scene for an hour, that is 3 to 4 hours of video evidence that must be reviewed.

One of the important elements that we are looking for when reviewing video evidence, can we capture the conduct of this reckless driver that caused the accident in the minutes and miles before the accident. What we find in many of our personal injury cases is that the driver had been driving recklessly for a long time, weaving in and out of traffic, passing vehicles on the side of the road, and speeding. Obtaining this video of the reckless driver in the minutes and miles before the accident occurred can mean the difference between the insurance company playing games with your case and not paying what they should, or a prompt and total surrender by the insurance company.

As you can tell obtaining all of the video evidence can take a great deal of time and requires expertise to know what to look for to tell the real story of what happened to you. That is not something you should be doing on your own, you need Willis, Willis & Rizzi to jump into that process, obtain and review all of the video evidence and assess how it impacts your personal injury case and decide the appropriate direction to get you the best outcome.

Many personal injury law firms will not take the time to gather and review all of this evidence like the team at Willis, Willis and Rizzi. This is time that you as the injured party should spend resting and recovering, and getting the medical treatment that you need to build your life back to how it was before the collision happened.

Contact us today at 330-535-2000 or fill in the request form on this page to speak to a personal injury attorney today.