Can I Get a Witness? (for a Car Accident, that is)

January 11th, 2010. By AbiK

Looking for a car crash witness-on-demand? You just might be able to find one, but it’ll cost you….read on…

True story. I was on I-287 in NJ heading toward Morristown a few years back. Doing about 65. Middle lane. A highway-sized street cleaning truck merged onto the highway, hit the car in the right (slow) lane, which then hit me. I spun into the left (fast) lane, and through some miracle was able to maneuver to the right-hand shoulder. No injuries (thankfully) but no witnesses either. 

So I found myself standing alone in the shoulder—no other car from the accident had pulled over. No witnesses. No help. No involved parties. Nada. Translation: no one for my insurance company to possibly collect from. 

Fast forward to last week. John here at LawyersAndSettlements.com shoots me a link to this website: WreckWitness.com. It’s an interesting and highly simple concept. If you’ve witnessed an accident, you can send in an email—free—about it and you might get paid; or, if you’ve been in an accident, you can search for a witness to your car accident and pay only if you find the right witness. 

At first, I’m thinking back to a recent post I did about commenters who post “eye witness” accounts of accidents they’ve seen on published articles about those accidents. I posted about how in this new age of access to all kinds of information, what’s to stop an insurance company or a lawyer from using such comments for fact-finding in determining who’s at fault in a car accident? And obviously, the questions and concerns that use of such commentary presents. 

So I was a bit dubious at first about a website that appeared dedicated to active trolling for car crash witnesses. 

But, if you read WreckWitness.com’s “About Us” page, you’ll see that the site was born out of frustration with what can go wrong with a car accident when it’s “he said, she said” and there isn’t any witness to corroborate either side of the story. 

WreckWitness.com is indeed an interesting concept and clearly there is (was?) a void out there begging for such a service. My only question is that with so many local message boards, community-based portals, and local media outlets online now, are you more apt to find your witness simply by asking around? Maybe, maybe not. But you’d save the $100 fee you’d pay if you found a viable witness on WreckWitness… 

Likewise, if your witness via WreckWitness is viable, should an insurance company or lawyer wish to speak with that witness, they need to cough up $100, too. Sort of like the witness is brokered or “owned” now by a third party. I’m already predicting how well that one would go over with my own insurance agent…

Time will tell whether this one takes off…

Tags: Car Accident, Car Crash, Witness

This was posted on Monday, January 11th, 2010 at 2:01 pm and is filed under Accidents . Feel free to respond, or trackback. Read our comments policy.