About a week and a half ago, during the early morning hours I was transporting my passengers home and I was the designated driver. I was driving down a residential in my 2 door sedan, and at some point lost control causing the right rear end of my vehicle to fishtail and slam right into the left rear end of a parked suv. the suv sustained moderate damage in the left rear bumper area. i was able to regain control of my vehicle after the collision and pulled it over next door facing the vehicle i hit. this was a very traumatic experience for me as it was my first major car collision. after the collision i immediately got out the vehicle and made sure that my intoxicated passengers were okay. i then began to start picking up the debris from my vehicle that was in the street. i was not able to keep my composure after the accident, and after pressure from peers i decided to leave my vehicle at the scene of collision and handle it the next morning. the next morning i went to the police department and spoke with traffic investigator and informed him of the incident which as i’m sure as you might know was already reported. He gave me a business card and told me to call him as soon as possible with the insurance. He told me that I would not be going to jail for this. I have since cooperated with the investigator providing him with my insurance information, filing the claim with the other party’s insurance. For a week after the incident I kept the investigator updated on my actions regarding the insurance notification on both sides, and I also submitted a letter of apology for leaving the scene. My situation: 1st time offender with no prior convictions, no injuries, major damage to my rear end and right rear quarter panel ( low to the ground 2 door sedan vs. suv) moderate damage to the other party’s vehicle, extensive and overwhelming cooperation with the authorities, not drunk driving (i was tired, i was in shock, pulled my vehicle to side of the road after collision in an attempt to handle the situation), in my last phone conversation the investigator reassured me and told me not worry and said that i would not be going to jail, or prison or anything like that, i am a double majoring college student who made a bad choice.
What will, or what could happen next? Please do not cut and paste something that you’ve found on an attorney’s website
You probably should have got an attorney the next morning. Probably too late now, since you gave up so much information already. Most likely just going to get a really large fine. They may suspect you were drunk, but nothing they can do now, although if there was any bottles in the car good luck with that one. I’d say fines and community service though, at least if they really aren’t going to give you jail time, as well as your insurance paying for damage and LARGE increase in premium if you aren’t dropped as well. Yeah hit and run isn’t going to go over well with your insurance company, even if you were cooperative and went to the police the next day. I can understand the shock of the situation. I’ve was involved in a bit of an accident when driving and can see getting shocked. Then the time I saw a deer coming toward the road and just slowed down after that and was kind of shocked by the thing running toward the road, didn’t get to the road or anything, but still kinda shook me up. I think that you are so cooperative they are likely to give you jail time. Thing is as much as the police MAY say that they don’t really decide that. They can tell the D.A. how cooperative you are being, and the D.A. can tell the Judge that and say they don’t want you to get jail time, BUT it is more about what the D.A. and Judge say. ONLY way the police can guarantee anything is if they don’t turn it over to the D.A., and that’s a little unlikely.
You are over reacting. You handled the situation well. No crime was committed other than a minor Traffic infraction. Worst case scenario you will get a simple traffic ticket. The only thing I’d recommend is next time leave a note on the other car with all your information on it, then there’s no risk of leaving the scene of an accident.