Can A Smartphone Really Be Your Best Friend (After An Accident)?

A smartphone might be your best friend following a Florida car accident. With all of the functions available on today’s iPhones, Droids, and Blackberry’s, a Florida automobile accident victim has plenty of ways to gather evidence at the scene of an accident — whether there are eyewitnesses available, or not.

Photographs of the accident scene and/or the damage to the vehicles involved is often critically important to the success of a car accident claim. Without photographs valuable information regarding skid marks, vehicle damage, or road defects or obstructions often quickly disappears. Fortunately, most of today’s smartphones come with powerful cameras that can capture images in amazing detail (up to 10 megapixels). Additionally, many of those same cameras have the ability to shoot movies, which could come in handy to capture actual traffic conditions or density at the time of a crash.

In addition, most of today’s smartphones also have an audio recorder function which could come in handy. Many times the stress or shock associated with a crash keeps us from remembering details that our brains would ordinarily reliably record. Accident victims can easily use their smartphones’ voice recorder to record their thoughts and impressions at the accident scene or shortly thereafter. Several companies also make audio dictation applications that would allow accident victims to translate their thoughts directly into text files that can be e-mailed, texted, or simply saved.

As an Orlando accident attorney, one of my clients’ biggest complaints is eyewitnesses who initially stop at a crash scene, but then leave because they don’t want to wait for police to arrive. A smartphone offers a great way to capture a photograph or movie of the eyewitness or to record a short statement of what he or she saw. An accident victim could even photograph the witnesses’ license plate as he drove away if there was any question about finding him or her in the future.

Orlando personal injury attorney Kim Cullen represents people who have been injured in Fl car accidents. Call Kim at 407-565-7386 with your questions, or order his FREE book for Florida accident victims, Asleep At The Wheel: 13 Mistakes the Insurance Company Desperately Hopes You’ll Make After Your Florida Car Accident.