The first days after a wreck on Canyon Crest Drive, on Central Avenue, or on the I-215 are easy to lose to the tow, the clinic, and the insurance calls. A short written checklist helps more than a stack of later voicemails. Start with care. If someone was hurt, get medical attention and keep the visit dates, the discharge papers, and the bills. Then write down the date of the wreck, the street or freeway, the time, the other plate if you have it, the agency that handled the scene, and any incident number on a card or a later letter.
Ask the responding department for its official crash report on the wreck. A city-street collision near the campus or the town center is often a local police matter. A freeway wreck on the I-215, the 91, or the 60 is often a Highway Patrol matter. The official CHP request page is the starting point for a CHP 190 request, and the Area office states the current fee. Use a city department’s official instructions when that department handled the scene.
Separate from that report is the SR-1 that some drivers must send to the Department of Motor Vehicles. Vehicle Code section 16000 requires a report within 10 days to the department at Sacramento, on an approved form, if the wreck caused property damage to any one person of more than $1,000, or bodily injury, or death. The official DMV accident-reporting page is the place to start that filing. Ten days is short. It is not the same clock as a later civil lawsuit, and it is not a replacement for a six-month public-entity claim.
Put the civil clocks on the same page in that first week, even if you do not expect to file a lawsuit immediately. An ordinary injury or death case generally must be started within two years under Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1. A public-entity claim is often due in six months under Government Code section 911.2. If a city bus, a county truck, a public-works vehicle, or a street-defect theory might be in the story, treat that six-month date as firm until you know otherwise. Minority or incapacity pauses in section 352 do not apply to that public-entity claim window.
Photograph the vehicles, the intersection, any visible injuries, and later bruises as they appear, if you can do that safely. Keep repair estimates, tow receipts, and a copy of the declarations page for any policy that may apply, including your own. Write down the names of insurers as they become known, and the dates of any claim numbers or denial letters. Do not rush into a long phone statement to an insurer before you have the basic file in front of you. A conversation like that does not pause a filing window, and it can be hard to reconstruct later if you have no notes.
If there were passengers, pedestrians, or other drivers, write down their names and any phone numbers they gave you at the scene. A later witness account can fade, and a crash report can take time to arrive. Those names belong on the same first-week list as the incident number and the plate. They do not replace the official report, and they do not extend a deadline, but they are harder to recover if they are not written down early.
Coverage questions can wait a day or two for the declarations page, but they should not wait for months. A policy first written or renewed on January 1, 2025 or later, should carry at least the 30/60/15 floor in Vehicle Code section 16056. An older policy may still show 15/30/5 until it renews. If the other driver has no useful policy, or left the scene, your own uninsured-motorist coverage and Civil Code section 3333.4 may also be in the picture. A rideshare wreck has its own official periods under section 5433, which the rideshare guide explains.
Shared fault does not have to be solved in the first week, but it should not be ignored. California measures fault in shares, and a person who was hurt can still seek damages even if that person also made a mistake. Civil Code section 1431.2 addresses several liability for non-economic damages. An early letter that treats the wreck as all-or-nothing is not the official rule. Keep the facts, including any later correction to the crash report, and let those facts be tested against the statutes rather than against a first phone summary.
If you live in Canyon Crest and the wreck happened in another city or another county, write that down clearly. The filing place follows the wreck, not the drive home. A later Riverside County case is often filed at the Historic Courthouse on Main Street, subject to the current assignment order, but a San Bernardino County or Orange County wreck generally belongs in that county. Confirm the branch only when you need the address. In the first week, the more urgent tasks are care, the 10-day SR-1 if it applies, the report request, and the six-month reminder if a public entity may be involved.
Call a published work phone on a local profile only if you want to speak with that office. That call reaches the office itself, not this directory, and sending a form message through this page does not hire a lawyer and does not stop a clock. If you do speak with counsel, take the dated checklist, the report request, the bills, and the declarations page with you. Treat this as a local briefing. Get advice on your own facts rather than relying on this briefing alone.