After a Crash in Georgia — Official Resources

Report the crash

Georgia requires the driver to give notice "immediately, by the quickest means of communication" when a crash causes injury, death, or apparent property damage of $500 or more. Inside city limits that's the local police department; outside them, the county sheriff or the nearest Georgia State Patrol post. In practice, calling 911 from the scene routes it correctly.

$500 is a low bar — it catches almost anything past a scuffed bumper. The standard is what the damage appears to be at the scene, so you don't need an estimate first. If it looks like it could cross the line, report it.

Get the crash report

Georgia routes most crash reports through BuyCrash, a private portal used by agencies statewide — roughly $13 by card, downloadable immediately once the agency uploads it. You'll need the date plus a report number, VIN, or driver's license number. Local police and sheriff reports usually appear within hours to a few days.

Cheaper but slower: the Georgia Department of Transportation sells reports by mail for $5. And if the Georgia State Patrol worked your crash, those go through the Department of Public Safety's Open Records Unit — 404-624-7591 — and can take up to about two weeks.

Access is limited by the Open Records Act to people involved in the crash and their insurers and attorneys.

Hit-and-run

Call police immediately — Georgia's $500 threshold means a hit-and-run almost always requires it anyway, and with nobody to exchange information with, the officer's report is the only record of what happened.

Save your clip and note the time and location. Then be patient with retrieval: if State Patrol works the scene, the report goes through Open Records rather than BuyCrash and can take a couple of weeks, which is worth knowing before you assume it's lost. Uninsured-motorist coverage is the usual path to payment, and your policy's own hit-and-run notice window is often far shorter than the claim deadline.

Find a lawyer

The State Bar of Georgia runs a Find-a-Lawyer directory and is the place to confirm any attorney is licensed and in good standing. The Bar doesn't refer individual lawyers itself, but it keeps a list of the local bar referral services that do — call 404-527-8700 and ask for the service covering your county.

Free legal help

GeorgiaLegalAid.org is the statewide free legal information site, maintained by the Atlanta Legal Aid Society, the Georgia Legal Services Program, and the State Bar's Pro Bono Project.

In metro Atlanta — Fulton, Clayton, Cobb, Gwinnett, and DeKalb counties — Atlanta Legal Aid takes applications at 404-524-5811. Elsewhere in the state, Georgia Legal Services covers the remaining counties, and the site will point you to the right office.

Insurance problems

The Consumer Services Division is the investigative arm of Georgia's Office of Commissioner of Insurance — it looks into complaints about insurers, agents, and how a claim is being handled. Call 404-656-2070 in metro Atlanta or 800-656-2298 elsewhere in Georgia, weekdays 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. — unusually long hours for a state agency, which helps if you work days.

Uninsured when it happened? The duty to call police doesn't change, and having the officer's report still helps you more than it hurts — it's the neutral account of what occurred. GeorgiaLegalAid is the place to start on everything after that.