Police To Reduce Minor Accident Call-outs
Prince George, B.C. – Prince George RCMP Municipal Traffic Services is asking the motoring public to help reduce the number of unnecessary police call-outs to minor collisions.
Police say they are called out to several accidents each day but their attendance isn’t required at some of those events and they would like to see the drivers involved recording the necessary information and clearing the area themselves. The Traffic Services Section will only be responding to serious collisions that involve serious injury or death, crime or public safety.
They also provide some tips on how what to do if you’re involved in a minor collision. First off, keep a notepad and pen in your vehicle. Next, move your vehicle off the road and put your hazard flasher on. Exchange information with the other driver(s) including make, model and colour of the vehicle, licence plate number, name and driver’s licence number, and time, location and road and weather conditions at the time of the accident.
Also, if you have a camera take pictures of your damage, their damage and the scene.
To report a collision to ICBC at any time, any day of the week, call 1-800-910-4222 or you can report to them online at www.icbc.com
Comments
what the hell? takes em away from Tim Horton’s? all they do is drive around with their sunglasses imitating the Terminator now days!
Not exactly the brightest cookie on the block are you if you make comments like that
The thing is mostly everyone who is involved in a crash panics and the first thing they are going to do is call 911. If the 911 operators are trained to you know tell the person they don’t need police assistance fine but majority of the motoring public is going to call police first. Instinct that can’t be changed whether it’s minor or not.
Will any insurance company process a claim without a police file number? Most of us assume that a policeman has to attend the scene to give it a file number, otherwise we could just phone in a bogus incident any time we are bored.
No you don’t need a police file number to take a claim to icbc. Lots of small fender benders don’t involve the police.
Well that’s just great, let’s see how ICBC will screw us all over courtesy of the lack of a police file number and investigation. ICBC will just say both parties are at fault and bill both, so why have insurance??? You can’t even get an honest ajuster, they work for ICBC and not your best interest…
Seems you are not to well informed. You certainly don’t need a police file number. all you really need is the lionise plate number for ICBC and ICBC looks after the rest. But a reference of the other driver is helpful.
I was back ended on Ospica and 15th. The big problem was not ICBC it was the repair shop. ICBC estimated the cost of repair at $1800.00 but it ended up costing $3200.00. Its a cash cow for the repair industry.
Cheers
In my (unfortunate) experience, they do a good job overall investigating non police accidents.
This is why we need a step between bi-law enforcement and RCMP. A municipal force of sorts.
RCMP are paid well and so they should be, but we don’t need heavily paid RCMP attending non violent minimal crime scenes… but I think it is appropriate to have an official representative of law enforcement that could attend issues that don’t reach the criminal nature of RCMP involvement.
Whether it be community policing, attending accident scenes, or simple bi-law enforcement it is simply not cost effective to have the RCMP taking on that role when a city this size could have a middle power authorized for these nuscence call outs. Maybe even make it a regional level of organization headed up by the regional district with a shared trading program with other regional centres.
PG has many good people that wanted to serve their community, but can’t make it through the RCMP demographics profiling, or have things like weight restrictions that preclude them from serving their community… Maybe even it could be used as a stepping stone or a training ground of sorts before moving on to the more rigorous RCMP training?
I have had a few minor accidents (Not my fault) and in every instance we cleared the road, exchanged pertinent information, phoned ICBC and reported the accident and details, and in every case determined among ourselves who was at fault before leaving the accident scene. No police involvement. All three cases settled by ICBC to the satisfaction of both parties.
So if you use good judgement there is no need to involve the police, unless someone is injured etc; Once the police, and others are involved you can rest assured that you will be spending a few hours on the side of the road for no reason.
So if the accident is minor, no police involvement. How much simpler can it be.?
That’s a good analyses. Thanks Pal.
Cheers
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