Car crashes remain one of the primary safety risks in the United States. According to a report cited by the Insurance Information Institute (III), nearly 4.8 million people were injured in auto accidents nationwide in 2020 alone. It is normal to be worried that your loved one may have serious injury or fatality if you have not heard from them for an unexpected period of time.
This raises an important question: How can you find out if someone you know was injured in a car accident? The short answer is that there are three basic ways to track down this information: 1) the hospital, 2) the police, and 3) personal contacts. Here, our Las Vegas car accident attorneys provide a more in-depth explanation of how you can find out if someone was hurt in a crash.
Finding out whether or not someone you know was hurt in a car crash can be a stressful and unnerving process. One of the challenges is that there is no a central database to refer to or a single phone number to call to ensure that you will get the right answer to the question. At the same time, that does not mean that it is impossible to get this information. Quite the contrary, you can find out a lot by making a few phone calls. Here are three main ways to find out if someone was involved in a serious car accident in Nevada:
1.Local Hospitals and Medical Providers: If you are concerned about a serious crash, nearby hospitals and medical providers are generally the best place to start. You can call the hospitals in the area where you believe that your friend or family member was driving. Under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), medical providers cannot tell you much. However, they generally can tell you whether or not a person is a “patient” at the facility. If no hospitals in the area have a record of a person being a patient, they may not have been seriously hurt in a crash. If they do have a record of a person receiving treatment, you can take action to make contact with them directly at the facility.
2. Police Departments: State and local law enforcement agencies may also be able to provide basic information about auto accidents. If you call a local police department, they may be able to tell you if an official crash report listed a person’s name as having been involved in an accident in recent days/hours. The only downside is that it often takes a little bit of time before a person’s name is entered into the system. As an example, if a crash happened 45 minutes ago, local dispatch may not yet have any details on who was involved.
3. Friends, Family, and Other Personal Contacts: Finally, you may also be able to get information by reaching out to your friends, family, and other personal contacts. They can sometimes have better information than the authorities—especially if the hospital and the police cannot seem to track down any information at all. It may be that your loved one is dealing with the aftermath of a relatively modest accident on their own. Alternatively, there may not have been a crash.
It should be noted that police officers in Las Vegas try to make an effort to notify a person’s closest loved ones if a serious accident has occurred. Unfortunately, the process is not always smooth—in some cases, law enforcement officers have trouble getting access to emergency contact information.
The aftermath of a serious crash can be chaotic. Not just at the accident scene itself, but also at the hospital and the police station. Unfortunately, it can sometimes be difficult for family members, friends, and other loved ones to get access to the information that they need. There are some proactive steps that you and your family members can take ahead of time to help ensure that information is shared after a serious accident. Here are two strategies:
1. The Traditional Method: The old school recommendation is relatively simple: Keep your emergency contact with you whenever you are in a car. Your emergency contact should be fully updated. It should clarify who needs to be contacted (and how) should a serious accident occur. As a general rule, your ‘in-case-of-emergency’ card should be located in the same place as your driver’s license. It might be in your wallet or in your purse. In the aftermath of a very serious car accident, emergency first responders tend to look for a person’s driver’s license to determine their identity.
2. A Tech-Savvy Approach: In recent years, more and more technology companies are rolling out new applications for car accidents. There are a number of different smartphone apps available that are designed to help handle an emergency situation after an accident. Some of the most popular examples are SOSmart and iWrecked. Some of these apps are built to make sure that police and first responders have access to your emergency contact information. Other smartphone applications are more advanced. They detect when an accident occurred and send an immediate message to the authorities and an emergency contact.
If your loved one was injured in a major car accident in Las Vegas, there are steps that you can take to help protect their health, safety, overall well-being, and legal rights. Among other things, you should do the following:
At Ladah Law Firm, our Nevada car accident lawyers work tirelessly to help injured victims secure their future. With a long record of successful results, our firm has recovered more than $150 million in financial compensation on behalf of injured victims. If your loved one was seriously injured in a motor vehicle collision, we are more than ready to get started on your case.
Call us now or send us a message to arrange your free, no-obligation initial legal consultation. You and your loved ones do not have to go up against big insurance companies alone. Our attorneys will do everything in their power to protect you.