Car Accident Lawyers in Las Vegas, Nevada

• If you are involved in a motor vehicle accident on public roads or property to which the public has access, you are required to promptly stop if there is a death or personal injury. You must render first aid if necessary to an injured party and notify the police. Failure to do so is a Class B Felony with a prison term of 2-15 years under N.R.S. 484E.010. This severe penalty is designed to discourage drunk drivers from leaving the scene while they sober up as well as to insure aid to injured people. Personal injury is not defined by this statute so it presumably includes minor personal injury such as small cuts or "whiplash."
• NRS 484E.030 requires you to stop immediately if you hit an attended vehicle even if there is no injury.
• If the vehicle you hit is unattended, NRS 484E.050 requires you to immediately notify the police.
• If you are involved in a collision with another driver and you stop, render any necessary aid, exchange identifications and insurance information, then under NRS 484E.070(2) you have a duty file a police report within 10 days if there was any personal injury or if the property damage was at least $750.

When you are required to immediately notify the police, I don't know if the legislature had in mind a 911 call, but I would recommend it just to make a record to protect yourself. Or, perhaps, better, you can call 311 which is a non-emergency line that is usually answered promptly. It doesn't matter if the only property damage is your own car, or if the property damage is slight. 

Over the years we have had many clients who have been involved in a fender bender and then both drivers agree to exchange information and not wait for the police to investigate. In these days of cell phones we believe you are technically violating the law if you don't at least call 911 or 311, explain the situation, and ask if you should wait for an investigating officer. While the police may agree that in a no-injury or minor injury situation it is not necessary to send an officer to investigate, if you are in the right, you may compromise your legal situation by missing the chance to have an independent person investigate the accident and assign fault. The other driver who verbally apologizes or admits fault may well deny being at fault later on. Usually if there is an accident on public roads, even without injury, the police will eventually come and investigate if requested. I would play it safe and phone in any traffic accident rather than end up like the professor I talked about above. (As discussed above with the example of the Las Vegas Metro Police, some police agencies won't go the scene to investigate "minor" collisions but other Nevada police agencies will.)

When the police investigate a collision, they usually give the drivers involved a print-out about 3 or 4 inches wide that identifies each driver and his or her insurance company. This is not the police report. Later the investigating officer will write up an actual report analyzing the collision. This report will be several normal size pages.

The different police jurisdictions in the Las Vegas area have different policies on giving out police report. For example, the City of Henderson Police and Nevada Highway Patrol take the view that police reports are public documents available to anyone. The City of Henderson may even send out a report by e-mail for free. Most police agencies charge a fee of several dollars for a copy. The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department demands a notarized authorization from a client to get a report, or else the person named in the report must go in person to get a copy.

In a collision involving two or more vehicles, when the Police write up the collision report, one driver always has to be labeled "Driver 1." By convention, "Driver 1" is the driver the police investigator thinks was at fault, unless it is a no witness situation where each of two driver, for example, claims the green light.

A police report is not a conclusive determination of fault. However, the police are presumed to be a neutral third party and usually an unfavorable police report will cause the adverse insurance company to refuse to make any payment, forcing the case to trial.

Naturally, in a big enough case, it may be worthwhile to challenge police conclusions with expert and other witness testimony. However, without very serious injuries it is usually not worthwhile to finance that kind of effort. The passenger in either car is never at fault (unless the passenger was interfering with the driver) so the passenger can always claim against one or both drivers.

If both drivers are at fault or if it simply cannot be determined who was at fault, a jury might decide to blame each driver for 50% of the fault. In that case, each injured driver would be awarded 50% of his or her damages. In a case with broken bones, where the pain and suffering award could be large compared to the medical bills, even an award of 50% of the damages could be valuable--keeping in mind the need to pay medical bills--out of the settlement. In a soft tissue injury case where the pain and suffering award is not usually large compared to the medical bills, an award of 50% of the damages might be insufficient to provide much compensation after repayment of medical liens. Also, if both drivers are at fault, if the jury finds one driver more than 50% at fault, even by a small amount, then that driver will get nothing.

"Moving violations" are violations of the law that contributed to the cause of the collision such as speeding, failure to yield the right of way, etc. "Non-moving violations" are things such as expired car registration, no proof of insurance, etc. As a general rule, in Nevada, non-moving violations don't effect who is at fault for the collision.

Police generally won't respond to a car collision on private property such as a parking lot unless there is major injury or a claim of intentional assault or drunk driving. If there is a taxi cab involved, the taxi cab authority may send out an investigator.

In the Spring of 2014, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department changed its practice of investigating all collisions on public road and now generally will only send an office to investigate if there is a claim of an injury or if one driver claims the other won't cooperate in showing ID and insurance information. It is generally in your interest, if you believe you are not at fault, to have the police investigate a collision you are in. The reason I say this is because most people aren't comfortable lying. If a driver knows he or she is at fault and 30 minutes after the collision an authority figure is asking them what happened, most people will tell the truth unless they are hiding something serious like drunk driving or driving a stolen car. But, if these same people, leave the collision scene, talk to their friends, and then two weeks later are asked about the collision I think they are more likely to lie.

Nevada Police generally assume that a vehicle which enters an intersection on a yellow light has the right of way in the intersection until it clears the intersection--even if it entered with insufficient time to clear the intersection before the light turns red. This is based on N.R.S.484B.250(1) which says the driver of a vehicle approaching an intersection shall yield to one already in the intersection and upon N.R.S.484B.253 which states that a driver turning left at an intersection, if the driver waited until it was safe to make his turn, now has the right of way with respect to other vehicles approaching the intersection. So, if the traffic light facing you turns green as you approach an intersection and you hit the gas and head into the intersection, you may be at fault if you collide with a car already in the intersection.