Sometimes a witness’ statement provides support for a claim about the nature and extent of a given injury. At other times, a statement made by a different witness might call into question the allegations that were used to determine who should be named as the driver at-fault.
Questions answered or statements verified by a witness’ observation
• What was the position of the involved vehicles before the collision took place?
• What was the estimated speed for each of the involved vehicles?
• How did the accident take place? Could it have caused the claimed injury?
• Does it seem to you that the reported injury should have been as severe as the one that was claimed by the victim of the collision?
• What were the actions of each injured victim? Were any of them seen walking around, immediately after the accident?
How to judge the credibility of a given witness?
• A credible witness is believable.
• A credible witness is trustworthy.
• Did the witness’ statements contain consistent details?
How did a specific person gain knowledge or the accidental occurrence? Did that same person see or hear what happened on the date of the injury-causing event?
How accurately did a given witness recall the shared information? Did that same information agree with the facts that had been given to the arriving officer?
How did the information provided by a given witness agree with the facts that a pedestrian had shared with someone in authority?
Is an eyewitness always one that should be trusted?
No, an occupant in any of the involved vehicles would be an eyewitness. Still, none of those same occupants could carry the label of trustworthy. Any one of them might elect to bend the truth, in order to suggest that the vehicle’s driver was not at-fault.
Some people hope that the word of an occupant will be trusted. Some of those same individuals might be part of a group that makes a point of staging collisions, and making the other driver appear responsible for that same staged event.
Such a group might arrange for one car to pull in front of another car, and to then have the same driver hit the brakes. If the car at the rear was unable to stop, then the occupants of the auto in front might allege that the innocent driver should be held responsible for the resulting rear-end accident.
That explanation for a staged event should showcase the reason that an eyewitness cannot always be trusted to supply an interviewer with trustworthy observations. In that case, a good Personal Injury Lawyer in Sault Ste. Marie would take the time to search for any facts that could shed light on the relation between the interviewed witness and the auto’s driver.