At the scene
Four things, and Washington law names all four.
- Check for injuries, then move the cars if they’ll move.
RCW 46.52.020(2)(a) requires a driver in a damage-only collision to move the vehicle “as soon as possible off the roadway or freeway main lanes, shoulders, medians, and adjacent areas.” The same subsection settles the worry that stops people doing it: “Moving the vehicle in no way affects fault for an accident.” Leaving a car in a live lane on 405 to preserve a scene is the more dangerous choice, and the statute says so. - Exchange exactly what the statute lists.
RCW 46.52.020(3) requires each driver to give “his or her name, address, insurance company, insurance policy number, and vehicle license number” and to show a driver’s license. Five items and a document. Photograph the other driver’s license and insurance card rather than writing them down, and you will not discover a transposed policy number a week later. - Photograph more than the damage.
Damage photos are the ones everyone takes. The ones that turn out to matter are the wide shots: both cars in position before anything moves, the road surface, the signals, the weather, the skid marks, and the license plates. An estimator reads a wide shot for what the impact did to the structure. A close-up of a dent only shows a dent. - Help, and don’t argue about fault.
The same statute requires you to “render to any person injured in such accident reasonable assistance,” and then removes the reason people hesitate: “Under no circumstances shall the rendering of assistance or other compliance with the provisions of this subsection be evidence of the liability of any driver.” Helping someone is not an admission. Guessing out loud about who caused it is a different thing, and there’s no deadline that requires you to do it at the roadside.
Whether you owe a written report
Most people never find out they did.
- Report owed
Injury, death, or property damage of $1,000 or more, and no law enforcement officer investigated. RCW 46.52.030(1) gives you four days to file a written report with the police chief if it happened inside a city, or the county sheriff or State Patrol if it happened outside one. - No report owed
An officer came out and investigated. Under RCW 46.52.030(3) that officer files the investigator’s report instead, and the driver’s duty in subsection (1) does not apply. This is why most people never file one, and it is also why the ones nobody attended slip through. - Under $1,000
No report is required, but the statute expressly permits one: nothing in it “prohibits accident reports from being filed by drivers where damage to property is less than the minimum amount.” Worth doing when the other driver was cooperative on the shoulder and may not stay that way.
The $1,000 figure is not in the statute. RCW 46.52.030(5) hands the threshold to the Washington State Patrol, which set it by rule: WAC 446-85-010, “Beginning January 1, 2015, the accident-reporting threshold for property damage accidents will be one thousand dollars.” The statute itself still reads five hundred dollars, from 1987, which is why so many pages quote the wrong number.
Who chooses the repair shop
The choice is yours. Here is what backs it up, and the two edges worth knowing.
Most pages answer this in four words and stop. The useful part is where the protection actually comes from, because that is what you point at when an adjuster pushes back. WAC 284-30-390 lists the practices Washington defines as unfair when an insurer settles a vehicle claim, and it is written throughout around the shop the customer picked.
- The rule is written around the shop you picked.
Subsection (1) makes it an unfair practice to fail “to make a good faith effort to communicate with the repair facility chosen by the claimant.” That phrase — the repair facility chosen by the claimant — is the state’s own starting assumption about whose choice it is. - Turning down your shop over its labor rate alone is arbitrary.
Subsection (2)(a): a denial “based solely on the repair facility’s hourly rate is considered arbitrary if the rate does not result in a higher overall cost of repairs.” A higher hourly rate over fewer hours is not a more expensive repair, and the rule is written to notice the difference. - Paying less than your shop’s estimate comes with a duty to explain.
Subsection (2)(b): where the insurer pays less than your chosen shop’s estimate, it “must fully disclose the reason or reasons” and “thoroughly document the circumstances in its claim file.” You are entitled to the reasons, in a form someone wrote down. - Two edges worth knowing before you sign anything.
Subsection (8) is the one to know. Where the policy provides for it, and the insurer “elects to exercise its right to repair the loss vehicle at a specific repair facility,” it may — but it then owes a repair that restores the car to its condition before the loss “at no additional cost to the first party claimant other than as stated in the applicable policy of insurance.” And subsection (4)(c): if your chosen shop’s overall cost exceeds the insurer’s estimate, you must be told you “may be responsible for any additional amount.”
Read together: the choice is yours, the insurer has to deal with the shop you chose in good faith and explain any shortfall in writing, and a difference in total cost can still land on you. Knowing which of those three you are arguing about is what makes the call go quickly. Subsection (3) is worth a look too — it makes requiring you to travel unreasonably, either to get an estimate or to have the car repaired, an unfair practice in its own right.
What happens to the car
The claim is one story. The vehicle is a different one.
- The first estimate is a starting document.
An estimate written from photos, or from a walk-around in a parking lot, describes the damage somebody could see. It is not a diagnosis. The document that closes the gap is called a supplement, and it is normal — a supplement is what a shop files when disassembly finds damage the first look could not. A claim that never generates one is not necessarily a claim that went smoothly. It is also the single biggest reason a repair runs past the date you were given — what sets the repair clock shows where that time actually goes. - Teardown finds what photographs cannot.
Modern unibody cars absorb impact by deforming in designed places, and the crumple is often behind an intact panel. Measuring the structure against factory specification is the only way to know whether it moved. We do that here with a Chief measuring system, and you get the before-and-after printout. - The safety systems have to be re-aimed.
Cameras, radar and parking sensors sit behind bumpers, in windshields and in mirrors. A sensor doesn’t need to be damaged to need calibration — it only needs to have moved. That work is sublet: an independent calibration specialist performs it, and you get their post-scan report. Our ADAS calibration guide covers what triggers it and how it’s done. - You choose the shop before the tow, if you can.
A car towed to a storage yard still has to be moved to whichever shop repairs it, and storage accrues in the meantime. If you are conscious, safe and being asked where the car should go, that is the moment your choice is cheapest to make.
Two documents leave with you at pickup: the Chief before-and-after measurement printout, and the calibration specialist’s post-scan report. Our collision repair page walks through the sequence, and the warranty covers the workmanship in writing.