HOW TO WRITE AN ACCIDENT REPORT

Usually, a police officer would be called to the scene of an accident. If a police detective is not available, you as an Environmental Health Officer or Safety officer on duty who witnessed the accident might need to write their own accident reports and file appropriately.
Here is how to write an accident report.

DO A GOOD LIST OF ALL ESSENTIAL DETAILS:
The first thing to do is to list all the essential details of the accident.

Usually, if an accident was minor, then participants might not want to bother calling the police. But for insurance and legal purposes, it is wise for someone to fill out an accident report. If you have been in an accident, there are three main categories of information that you will need to report:

1) Environmental circumstances,

2) People at the location of the accident and

3) The vehicles involved.

Try to be objective. Write down the time, date and location of the accident. You will need to be very detailed with not only the city, county and state, but the cross streets and exact position on the street where the accident occurred. Note any debris or skid (tyre marks) also. Take pictures if you can.

1.) Environmental factors: These could include the amount of light (natural or artificial), street conditions, amount of traffic and weather. Note any significant landmarks, especially property that might have damaged: signs, fences or buildings. If there was property damage, include the name of the owner, address and estimated cost of damage.

2.)  Next, identify the people at the accident location. You must note the primary drivers involved in the accident-reporting and any other party involved also. Other people listed would include passengers, drivers, conductors etc , and some key bystanders that are not involved in the accident.
Include name, age, gender, home address and contact information for all the people. For the drivers add drivers licence number and insurance policy. List all injuries (and deaths if any) with the name, severity and hospital if applicable.

NOTE: YOU NEED TO CREATE A MAP DIAGRAM (ROUGH SKETCH) OF THE ACCIDENT SCENE

3.) The third stage is to recreate the position, velocity and vehicles on the scene. What is the vehicle type, make, model and year? Include license plate information, number, issuing state and year of expiration.

List the original location of each vehicle on the site and velocity (direction and speed) before impact. Next, note the position of all parties at impact.
Finally, show where the vehicles ended up after the accident. Describe the damage to the vehicles along with the cost of repairing it. Can the vehicle be salvaged?

People should be able to understand what happened by reading your accident report. At the end, sign and date your accident report to make it official.

-Reference:
J. Hirby