For someone involved in a car accident case, even innocent or harmless social media activity can potentially impact their case. Any photos, posts, comments, check-ins, and more can affect how your case proceeds, what evidence is used, and what settlement you may receive.
Documenting Evidence of The Scene and Accident
On-the-scene posts frequently include invaluable evidence for later legal proceedings.
For example, drivers and passengers may share photos on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram showing exactly where vehicles ended up following the collision. These images preserve key data around how the cars came to rest, road conditions at the scene, traffic signals that may have been involved, and more. Even slight details like weather evident in a photo can become evidence down the road.
Equally important, bystanders often record or even livestream footage of accident scenes. They may not even realize it, but these citizen journalists provide attorney investigators with authentic, real-time recordings of what transpired during and immediately after crashes. The videos unequivocally establish important factors like weather, exactly when emergency vehicles arrived, roadway configurations, traffic flow, and related elements that could influence the case down the road.
Without even trying, social media users are generating tangible documentation and evidence for not just their own legal cases but those of complete strangers. A video post capturing the aftermath of a collision you drove by could end up benefiting someone else’s injury lawsuit. They can all affect out-of-court legal settlements.
What Other Evidence Hides in Social Media Posts?
Beyond explicitly documenting accident scenes, social media provides attorneys with a wealth of evidence for reconstructing what led to crashes and examining claims made by parties later on.
For example, posts about the weather can establish substantiate driving conditions at the time of collision. Even a post from a local business commenting about high winds or icy roads helps paint a picture of the situation leading up to a crash. Construction notifications, event invitations, check-ins at venues — seemingly innocuous posts can provide context around traffic, weather hazards, visibility issues and more on the day of an incident.
Just as important, patterns of posts over time can shed light on a driver’s typical behavior and mindset. A history of posts made while driving clearly suggests distraction behind the wheel, for instance. If someone routinely tweets complaints about drowsy driving or makes late-night posts about drinking before driving the next morning, these behaviors could become pivotal evidence in a later collision. Even venting about having a terrible, rushed day or complaints about traffic can help establish negligence in an accident case down the road.
Make no mistake — social media provides a treasure of documentation not just of accident scenes but also of driving habits, behaviors, impaired states and other evidence that attorneys dig into after collisions.
How Attorneys Access Social Media Data
To leverage social media content, legal teams utilize two main sources of data — the vast searchable records of posts publicly visible online and the metadata attached to every post behind the scenes.
- Public posts — these are visible to anyone with access to the social media platform and represent a searchable record of photos, check-ins, comments, and more tied to a user. Attorneys can search for phrases like “I was hit by a car what do I do”, and scroll back through years of posts made by parties in an accident case looking for evidence. Even deleted posts often still exist in private archived records obtained via subpoena or public records searches using specialized legal databases.
- Metadata — behind every social media post exists hidden data called metadata that provides extra context about the post itself. Metadata reveals the exact time and date a post was made down to the minute, geographic coordinates attached to a post, what device or computer was used to author it, editing history, original file details for photos and videos, and more. This augmented information gets used to establish timelines, confirm locations, provide further documentation, and authenticate evidence.
Furthermore, modern social media ecosystems provide location services for tracking users over time. By accessing stored location data, legal teams can potentially:
- Pinpoint a driver’s whereabouts before and after an accident using timestamped locations
- Corroborate or undermine timeline claims made later in court
- Establish where a person stopped before driving, like at a restaurant or bar
- Calculate driving speed based on check-in times and location data
- Review routes driven and other relevant data.
In essence, social media provides investigators with insight into drivers’ locations, states of mind, behaviors, posts, and metadata. When collected properly following an accident, it comprises a forensic treasure trove that can make or break injury and damage claims later on.
Impacts on Injury and Damage Claims Cases
Social media evidence comes into play for both accident injury claims and vehicle damage claims in critical ways.
Let’s look at how it may influence these important insurance claims.
Documenting Injuries for Personal Injury Cases
In any car accident injury claim, the central question focuses on how severely you got hurt and what limitations the injuries impose on daily functioning. The more substantiated your asserted injuries and resulting life disruption, the greater the potential compensation. This is where social media posts become double-edged swords.
For instance, sharing photos of you playing sports, going on jogs, carrying heavy bags or backpacking could contradict serious injury claims. Complaints about emotional distress due to the accident carry less weight when balanced against happy, normal-appearing social media posts around life events. If your location gets tagged at the gym the day after an accident or records show you at a concert weeks later, these digital breadcrumbs undermine legal assertions around disabling pain and suffering.
The irony sets in when crash victims feel motivated to post positive, only uplifting content to friends and family after an incident. However, viewing this selective content out of context can enable insurance company claims adjusters to lowball settlement offers, questioning uncorroborated pain and exaggerated disability.
Documenting Vehicle Damage for Damage Claims
Similarly, social media documentation matters greatly when filing property damage claims after accidents. Photos and commentary around vehicle damage, repair delays, valuation disputes and related claims influence settlements here as well:
- Before and after images establish baseline vehicle condition and extent of crash damages
- Posts about problems getting repair parts or rental cars support timeline disputes
- Commentary about desired replacement parts, expanded repair options and quality disputes affect final valuation calculations
- Stated concerns over repair thoroughness or repairs taking too long substantiate diminished car value arguments
- Documented troubles finding matching paint or materials bolsters secondary diminished value claims
All commentary, imagery and documentation from social media feeds into valuation debates after accidents. Even seemingly supportive posts about one’s own repair challenges subsequently benefit insurance adjuster arguments around pricing and timeliness. Know that everything shared publicly gets used later by insurance company representatives seeking any area of dispute or debate around property damage claims.
Social Media Evidence Impacts on Settlements
Beyond shaping arguments and evidence involved in contested court cases, social media documentation also weighs substantially during insurance claim settlement proceedings. Settlement outcomes get influenced dramatically based on available social media evidence — for better or worse.
In scenarios where compromise happens before cases reach a courtroom, social media evidence factors into insurance providers’ settlement calculations in several ways:
- Strong Supporting Evidence – When genuine injury claims correlate to patterns seen in social media histories, photographs, location data and metadata, insurance firms often propose higher settlement offers to avoid risky court proceedings. Even the chance of slight exaggerations faces substantive social media corroboration.
- Swift Verification – Cases with ample available social media evidence often resolve faster outside court compared to disputed claims backed merely by verbal assertions. Documented evidence speeds verification and shifts settlement talks.
- The pattern of Care Documentation – Seeing ongoing medical care, physical therapy visits, lifestyle impact calls and related discussions documented on social media reassures insurers about injury claim validity, supporting maximized compensation.
- Dispute Avoidance – Clear, irrefutable photographic and location evidence weakens grounds for insurance firms to dispute liability claims. Policy maximum payouts REQUIRe concession only when evidence remains ambiguous. With social media substantiation, legal teams gain leverage around reasonable settlement demands.
Make no mistake, even settlements require documented demands, which social media readily provides. Secret surveillance tactics still get used by less reputable insurance firms to uncover inflated claims, but most UK insurers today leverage technology combined with human intelligence for making equitable settlement determinations.
Handling Social Media During Active Car Accident Cases
The overarching advice for those engaged in ongoing legal proceedings around car accident injuries or damages remains simple — extreme caution posting anything related to your case on social media channels. Instead, work closely with your legal team on appropriate evidence gathering.
In general, during active lawsuits or settlement negotiations, you want to:
- Adjust privacy settings to restrict access only to known contacts. Remove open access entirely for the public or search engines to view your profiles.
- Temporarily suspend tweeting or sharing public updates about your health, injuries, treatments, vehicle repairs or other topics connected to your proceedings.
- Double-check all connection requests, which may come from insurance investigative staffers attempting to monitor your activities behind the scenes. Avoid posting anything not already known to your legal team.
- Switch off location services temporarily on your smartphone and tablets to avoid inadvertent tracking, if you feel comfortable doing so. Popular apps still utilize GPS tagging in spite of disabling features.
- Carefully photograph recovery milestones, working with your law firm’s case manager or paralegal. Never publicly share images or descriptions proactively documenting apparent progress healing from your accident injuries while legal action continues unfolding.
Work closely with your chosen law firm to devise an appropriate strategy around smart social media usage that supports your case without inviting invasive insurance firm exploitation or manipulation after your accident. The safest path focuses on staying silent publicly until getting guidance from counsel.
