Claim readiness checklist
Everything worth doing for a car insurance claim, in the order it stops being possible, with a line beside each item saying why it is there.
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At the scene
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Why it matters A second collision into the first is common, and it makes the damage from each impact impossible to separate.
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Why it matters Rest positions are the one piece of evidence that disappears the moment traffic starts moving again.
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Why it matters The close-up proves the damage; the wide shot proves it was that car.
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Why it matters These are the details an adjuster asks about six weeks later, when nobody remembers them.
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Why it matters A photograph of a policy card cannot be mistranscribed, and one digit wrong is days lost.
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Why it matters A neutral witness carries more weight than either driver, and they are gone in five minutes.
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Why it matters That number is how anyone finds the report later, including your own insurer.
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Why it matters Memory of a crash fades quickly, and it fades in the direction that flatters the person remembering.
Before you file
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Why it matters The policy sets its own clock, separate from anything a law sets, and it is usually the shorter of the two.
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Why it matters The two routes pay differently, move at different speeds, and one of them may cost you a deductible.
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Why it matters Every insurer asks for the same three documents, and hunting for them is where the first week goes.
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Why it matters An estimate you commissioned is the only figure in the file that did not come from the insurer.
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Why it matters Towing and storage are payable heads of claim that people routinely forget to submit.
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Why it matters Mileage and condition drive the valuation, and they are argued about more often than the damage is.
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Why it matters An injury first mentioned three weeks later is an injury the insurer will treat as three weeks old.
After you file
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Why it matters A dated log is what turns nobody called me back into something anyone can check.
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Why it matters Most stalled claims are waiting on a single item nobody ever named out loud.
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Why it matters A valuation you cannot see is a valuation you cannot argue with.
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Why it matters A release usually closes heads of claim you have not thought about yet, including injuries that surface later.
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Why it matters A written reason is the one thing a supervisor, a regulator or a lawyer can actually work from.
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Why it matters Every other item on this list stops mattering the day a period runs out.
The driver’s kit, at the scene
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Why it matters A driver standing in live traffic will follow a card from the glovebox and will not recall a policy document.
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Why it matters A first call to the wrong desk is how one incident gets reported twice, in two different versions.
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Why it matters The scene is the only evidence the company cannot reconstruct afterwards at any price.
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Why it matters A roadside guess at a speed or a share of blame follows the file all the way, and it is usually wrong.
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Why it matters Without that number, finding the report later means a request that takes weeks.
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Why it matters Photographs that stay on a phone are photographs that leave with the phone.
The company’s filing kit
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Why it matters A file that passes between three people loses a week at each handover, and each handover loses a document.
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Why it matters An insurer’s first questions are about the vehicle, not about the crash.
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Why it matters Whether the trip was company business decides which policy the insurer looks at first.
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Why it matters Licence status is checked on every commercial file, and it is far quicker to record now than to reconstruct later.
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Why it matters Loss of use is a claimable head in many places, and only a day-by-day log will support it.
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Why it matters An injury claim runs on a different track from a bent panel, and it is the one that escalates.
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Why it matters Two versions of one incident is the most expensive kind of paperwork error there is.
Evidence you must not lose
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Why it matters Most dashcams overwrite themselves within days, and the overwrite is silent.
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Why it matters Speed, braking and harsh-event data are read in context, and the context is the hour before.
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Why it matters Fatigue is the first thing the other side looks for, and the first thing you want settled either way.
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Why it matters Resized copies pasted into a report lose the timestamps and coordinates that made them evidence.
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Why it matters A claim against the company often turns on whether the vehicle was fit to be on the road at all.
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Why it matters Routine deletion that carries on after a claim is known does far more damage than the deleted document ever would have.
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Why it matters Evidence nobody can find is evidence you do not have.
Why a list, and why this order
A car insurance claim is decided mostly by evidence that has a short shelf life. The positions the cars came to rest in survive until traffic moves. The other driver’s documents survive until they drive away. A witness survives about five minutes. Meanwhile the questions that decide the money — how fast, from which direction, what condition was the car in, was anybody hurt — get asked weeks later, by somebody who was not there and who has a file rather than a memory.
So the list is ordered by expiry rather than by importance. The items at the top are not the most consequential; they are the ones you lose if you do not do them now. The items further down are the ones that decide the figure, and most of them are still available a month later.
The two lists are genuinely different
A driver is documenting an accident. A company is documenting an accident and its own position at the same time, and the second part is the one that gets neglected. Whether a trip was company business decides which policy an insurer looks at first. Whether the vehicle was fit to be on the road is what a claim against the company frequently turns on. Whether a driver’s licence was in order on the day is checked on every commercial file, and it takes thirty seconds to record now and a fortnight to reconstruct later.
The company list therefore has a section a driver’s list does not need at all: the evidence that destroys itself. Dashcams overwrite within days and do it silently. Telematics retention is a setting somebody chose once. Routine document deletion carries on running after a claim is known unless somebody stops it, and stopping it — a litigation hold, in as many words — is the single most valuable thing on that section, because failing to stop it converts a document problem into a credibility problem.
What the list will not tell you
It will not tell you how long you have. Deadlines are the one part of a claim that is entirely local: the period to sue, the period the insurer has to answer you, the notice your own policy requires, all differ by state and by country and some of them are counted in business days. The list says to diarise them; it does not say what they are, because a number invented here would be read as the rule. The jurisdiction pages carry the real periods with the statute beside each one, and the deadline calculator turns them into dates.
It also will not tell you what you are entitled to. Nothing here is an assertion about coverage, liability or the value of anything. It is a list of things that are cheaper to do than to wish you had done.
Claim deadline calculator · Crash simulator · Rules where you are
Frequently asked questions
Is this a legal requirement checklist?
No. Nothing here is a rule, and the list deliberately asserts none. What a law or a policy requires of you differs by where the accident happened and by what you signed, and those specifics live on the jurisdiction pages, cited to the statute or the regulator. This is the practical layer underneath: the things that help a claim regardless of which set of rules turns out to apply.
Why does every item explain itself?
Because a checklist nobody understands is a checklist nobody finishes. Most of these items look like overkill in the ten minutes after a crash, and the reason they are here is a specific failure that shows up six weeks later — a valuation argued on mileage nobody photographed, a witness whose name nobody took, a tow invoice nobody kept. The line beside each item is the argument for doing it while it is still possible.
Where are my ticks stored?
In your browser, under a single key, and nowhere else. They are not sent to Ariski, they are not attached to an account and they are not readable from another device. If you clear site data or open the page in a private window, they are gone, which is why the list prints.
What makes the company list different?
Three things a driver does not have to think about. The company is documenting authority — who was driving, on whose instruction, doing what — because that is what decides which policy an insurer looks at first. It is documenting downtime, because loss of use is claimable in many places and only a day-by-day record supports it. And it is preserving evidence that deletes itself: dashcam footage that overwrites in days, telematics that rolls off, maintenance records that a routine retention policy will quietly bin once a claim is already known.
What is a litigation hold, and why is it on the list?
It is an instruction, issued the moment a claim or a lawyer’s letter arrives, to stop every routine deletion that touches the vehicle, the driver and the trip. It is on the list because the damage from automated deletion continuing after a claim is known is almost always worse than anything the deleted document contained. A company that cannot produce the footage looks like a company that did not want to.
Can I use this if the accident was weeks ago?
Yes, and the later sections are the ones that matter then. The scene items will be closed to you, but the filing and follow-up items — a written estimate you commissioned, the valuation report behind a total-loss figure, a written reason for any refusal, a dated log of every call — are what claims actually turn on once the photographs are taken.
This guide explains how car insurance claims generally work. It is not legal advice, does not create a lawyer–client relationship, and is not a statement of any insurer's or regulator's position. Rules change and differ by jurisdiction; check the cited instrument and, where money or injury is at stake, consult a licensed professional in your jurisdiction.