The 5-minute checklist
- Wide shots first (60 seconds). Before anyone moves a car, take four or five wide photos from different angles and distances — one from each direction of travel if it's safe to walk there. These establish where the vehicles came to rest relative to each other, the lane lines, and the intersection. You can never recreate this once cars are moved.
- Each vehicle, all four sides (90 seconds). Every vehicle involved, not just yours, and not just the damaged side. Undamaged panels matter: they're what stops the other side from claiming pre-existing damage was part of this crash.
- Close-ups of the damage (45 seconds). Get close enough that the depth of a dent or the direction of a scrape is obvious. Include deployed airbags, broken glass, and fluid on the ground.
- Plates, VIN, and paperwork (45 seconds). Photograph each license plate, the VIN through the windshield, and the other driver's license and insurance card. Photographing beats writing it down — no transcription errors, and you're done in seconds.
- Context and conditions (60 seconds). Traffic signals and signs (shot so it's clear which direction they face), skid marks, debris fields, potholes, obstructed sightlines, and the weather and lighting. If there are witnesses, photograph their contact info written down, and ask before photographing them.
Two things that don't fit in the five minutes but belong in the same file: photograph your own injuries the same day, even minor ones, and again two or three days later. Bruising and swelling often peak well after the crash, and the progression is hard to argue with. And once a police report number exists, photograph that too.
A few technique notes that matter more than gear. Shoot stills, not video, for damage — adjusters review images. Hold still and let the camera focus; a sharp photo of a scuff beats a blurry photo of the whole car. Don't zoom with your fingers, walk closer. And don't send your originals through a messaging app to your adjuster: most messaging platforms compress images and strip metadata, and the stripped file is weaker evidence than what came off your camera. Upload originals through the insurer's app or email them as attachments.
Gear that actually earns its place
You can do all of this with a bare phone. But three categories genuinely change the outcome, and they're worth buying before you need them, not after.
A dash cam
Paid linkThe single highest-value item, because it captures the seconds your photos can't: who entered the intersection first, whether a brake light came on. Keep the original file with its metadata intact and don't trim or re-encode it. One legal wrinkle: audio recording is restricted in all-party-consent states, so know your state's rule and consider whether to leave the mic off. Mounting matters too — essentially every state restricts windshield obstruction, and mounting high behind the rearview mirror or on the dash is the safe choice.
Browse dash cams on AmazonHigh-endurance microSD cards
Paid linkA dash cam is only as reliable as its storage. Loop recording overwrites continuously, which chews through ordinary cards in weeks or months; high-endurance cards are built for exactly that write load. A dead card discovered the day after a crash is a total loss of evidence.
Browse high-endurance microSD cards on AmazonA solid phone mount
Paid linkIt keeps your phone out of your hands while driving, and at a scene it gives you somewhere to park the phone while you're exchanging paperwork — which sounds trivial until you've set a phone on a bumper and driven off without it.
Browse car phone mounts on AmazonMaking your photos harder to doubt
Adjusters and opposing counsel do look at metadata, and they know its limits: EXIF timestamps depend on your phone's clock, GPS can drift, and missing metadata is itself treated as a red flag. That's the gap a proof camera closes. EtchImage captures photos that are C2PA-signed at the moment of capture with a verified timestamp, so the file carries cryptographic evidence that it hasn't been altered since — rather than metadata anyone could have edited. It won't decide fault for you. It just means nobody gets to spend a paragraph of your claim arguing about whether your photos are real.
Take the five minutes. Take more photos than feel necessary. You can always delete extras; you can never go back to the scene.