You know the feeling. You’re driving down the road at the weekend, people are slipping in and out of lanes because they don’t know where they are going and others are crossing the chevrons when it’s too late. You might be thinking to yourself that it would have been much less stressful to stay at home, you’re probably right.
However, then the time comes where someone tries to cross over your lane without any warning, and you end up involved in an accident. It is a drivers worst nightmare, and what’s worse is it wasn’t even your fault. However, before you call your car accident lawyer or your insurer, you will need to deal with the scene in front of you.
1) Make the area safe
As long as you are able to move around and you haven’t majorly injured yourself, you will want to get up and take a look around the area to make sure it is safe and secure. If you have crashed on a busy area of the road, particularly a highway, you will need to be very cautious of passing traffic. You will need to put your hazard lights on and make the other car do the same to warn drivers, and turn off your engines to avoid any gas leaking and causing an explosion.If there are children involved, get them away from the cars and from the road.
2) Get help
Once you’ve secured the area you will need to call for help. Fist of all call 911 and ask for an ambulance. You will need to give them your location in as much detail as you can, along with the state of the drivers and passengers, how many people are involved and also your phone number in case the operator needs to get in touch with you again.
3) Assess casualties
Once you have made sure that you are okay, you will need to go and check on everyone else on the scene. Start with the most severely injured people and be sure not to move them if they have back or neck pain. Offer them water and some food, and try to make people comfortable as you wait for an ambulance to arrive.
If there is a life threatening situation such as the car coming up in flames, you will need to move the casualty away and quickly and gently as you can. Keep their head and neck supported at all times because you don’t know the extent of their injuries yet.
If someone is bleeding, take some fabric and try your best to put pressure on the wound to stop the bleeding. If there were witnesses to the accident you may be able to get them to help you keep pressure on the wound as you check in everyone else.
If you need to carry out CPR, you will need to ache patient flat on the floor and perform compressions 100 at a time, and perform mouth to mouth in-between. This should keep them alive until the medical professionals arrive to aid you.