What Do You Do When In A Motor Vehicle Accident?, Two Great Skills Of A Quality Process Server, Question Of The Day, How Do We Locate A Missing Person?

In this episode, we cover:-

1- What Do You Do When In A Motor Vehicle Accident?

2- Two Great Skills Of A Quality Process Server.

3- Question Of The Day.

4- How Do We Locate A Missing Person?

Got a question for our podcast or do you need to contact Simon and the Down Under Investigations team? Simply email info@downunderinvestigations.com or call 1300849007 or check out www.downunderinvestigations.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hi, welcome to the latest podcast episode of Down Under Investigations, The Truth. We discuss all things private investigation, process serving, skip tracing and surveillance. You'll hear all about legal issues, cutting edge techniques, latest news and accurate information about our exciting industry. Let's join our host, Simon.

SPEAKER_01: 0:23

Welcome to our latest podcast. Great to have you here listening. Now, if you hear some birds chirping in the background or a bit of rain, it's because I'm recording this one remotely away from the office. So you may hear a little bit of background noise. Hopefully there's nothing too confusing or distracting. But stay tuned because we've got an awesome episode. Some great topics we're about to cover. One topic that comes up for us regularly is what do you do if you're in a motor vehicle accident in Australia? What are your legal obligations and how do you protect yourself against fraud? Because getting into a car accident can be stressful and disorientating. Knowing exactly what steps to take immediately afterwards can help meet your legal obligations, protect your rights and guard against fraudulent claims. So we wanted to give you a clear and practical guide for what to do if you're involved in a motor vehicle accident in Australia. First thing you need to do is ensure safety first. Check for injuries. Your first priority is safety. Check yourself and others for injuries. Call emergency services if required. Dial triple O if someone is injured or if there's significant damage or if the situation is dangerous, say on a highway or somewhere where there's cars passing, pedestrians around, that sort of thing. Next step is move vehicles if safe. If no one is injured and it's safe to do so, move your vehicle to avoid blocking traffic. Turn on hazard lights to alert other drivers. Of course, this is all about safety first. That's number one. Number two, fulfill your legal obligations. In Australia, the law requires you to stop and provide assistance. You must stop at the scene of an accident and provide help to anyone who is injured. You need to exchange details with the other involved parties. This includes name and address. Make sure you get the correct address. Make sure you flip over that license. Even if you get a photo of their license, flip it over and always ask the person, is that your current address? Because often people don't update their license or forget to put the new sticker on and they don't have the current address listed. So ask them for the current address, get the vehicle registration number, get driver's license details and provide these as well. These are things you need to provide and you need to ask for. Also ask about insurance information. This isn't, like a definite you need to do this, but it's definitely recommended. Refusal to exchange details can result in criminal charges, especially if someone is injured or dies at the scene of an accident. So that's the second thing, fulfill your legal obligations. The third thing you need to do is report the accident when required, because you are legally required to report an accident to police if someone is injured or killed, or a party fails to stop to exchange details, or a vehicle needs to be towed, or there's significant damage to property, say a fence or a pole or a bridge or anything else. like that. Each state and territory has its own reporting requirements. New South Wales, you report through the police assistance line on 131 444 if it's not an emergency. And Victoria, Queensland, WA and all other states have their own hotlines which you need to look up and check your own state's transport or police website. So that's the third thing. Make sure you report the accident when required. The fourth thing you need to do is document the scene. This is to protect yourself, especially against fraudulent claims through documentation. So what you want to do is take photos of the vehicle positions and damage. That's both vehicles or any other vehicles involved. Take photos of the license plates, both front and back. Take photos of the road conditions, skid marks, signs and any debris that are on the road. You need to record the date and the time. Get witness details if possible. Ask, did you see the accident occur? Did you see this? Did you see that? You don't need to take a statement from the person, but just ask and collect their details, whether that's their name and phone number, address, whatever they're willing to give you. And make notes on what's happened while it's still fresh in your memory. Some people, what they'll do is they'll actually get their camera out. and they'll record on their phone. They'll record, rather than just snap photos, just record the scene, record where the vehicles are, where they've ended up, where they've come from, where they've gone, the road conditions, the weather conditions, and all those other things like skid marks, debris, signs. And it's a great way that you can protect yourself. It's also useful for police because police may investigate who was actually at fault if there's a dispute as to who is at fault. They may get involved and they may want to see exactly what the scene looked like at the time and your video footage can really help protect you there. Number five, don't admit fault at the scene of an accident. Don't say, I'm so sorry. Don't say, I hit you. Check if they're okay, of course, but don't say, oh, that was my fault, unless you're certain it was your fault and you're not going to try and contest it. But your insurance company may have a clause there where you are not to admit liability or fault at the scene. There could be details you're unaware of and fault is often determined later based on evidence and the insurer police assessments. For example... You might hit another vehicle or you may have a collision with another vehicle. What happens if they were drink driving and you don't know at the time, you don't realize that they had alcohol in their breath. They come, they're breath tested and they're well and truly over the limit. That's going to go towards police determining who was at fault at the scene of the accident. It may not have been your fault. They may have swerved into you. They may have done something if they're over the limit to cause the accident. So just exchange the necessary information and let the appropriate parties make the as to who was at fault. Don't have that argument. Don't try and have that argument there and then, and don't admit fault. Sixth thing you need to do is to notify your insurance company. Even if you don't intend to make a claim, you should notify your insurer about the accident as soon as possible. Provide all the details you gathered. Provide a clear and factual description of what happened. Provide the contact info of other involved parties. Delaying notification can affect your coverage or complicate future claims. There is also plenty of lawyers and other motor claims companies that will assist you at the scene of an accident and with an accident claim if you're not at fault. They're great to contact. We have some great Awesome contacts in the industry who assist to make sure that you get everything you're entitled to, get your vehicle repaired. If you're liable to receive a hire car, they will help sort that out and help make it just a smooth process for you if you're not at fault. The seventh thing you need to do is protect yourself against fraudulent claims. Fraudulent claims do happen. Here's how to guard against them. Insist on exchanging full details. If the other party is hesitant or avoids giving their info, it may be a red flag. For example, I have a colleague who had an accident only recently and there was one person in the vehicle and she was obviously female and she had L plates on the vehicle and she was driving by herself. There was no one else present. So they started discussing it. She got on the phone and all of a sudden her husband turned up. And then he tried to claim that he was driving the vehicle, which is just a lie, a flat out lie. And she was driving on her L plates without a registered licensed person alongside her, guiding her and directing her. So big fraud about to happen there. But luckily, my colleague did document the scene and had witnesses that proved that she was driving the vehicle and not him. You need to keep your own version of events documented and documented. be cautious of tow trucks or third parties who may arrive unsolicited and offer help they may not be legitimate They may try and tow your truck to their preferred person to get their own kickback, to get their own cash. Another thing you can do is check for surveillance cameras on nearby shops or street poles that may have captured the incident because that is useful. That will help determine who was at fault. If you suspect a scam or staged incident, report it to your insurer and, if appropriate, to the police. Number eight, seek legal advice. Seek legal advice if needed. If you're being blamed for an accident you didn't cause or if you're dealing with injuries or you're concerned about liability or compensation. It's always worth consulting a traffic accident lawyer, one who deals with litigation to do with motor vehicle accidents and other companies that do assist in those ways. There's free legal resources also available through Legal Aid through each state. So final thoughts, being involved in an accident is difficult enough without the stress of legal trouble or insurance fraud. Follow these steps and you can manage your situation calmly, meet your obligations under Australian law and ensure you're well protected. Most importantly, drive safely and stay aware on the roads. I wanted to talk now just quickly about how being a multi-skilled process server can really assist your clients. It can assist your lawyers and law firms or individuals that you work for and how being multi-skilled can really help set them up for a win and success and help you become a better process server. See there's two key skills I believe that are vital to a process server and they are being able to skip trace and being able to conduct good proper legal surveillance. See, a process server can significantly benefit a client by using skip tracing and surveillance, especially in cases when the person to be served is difficult to locate or deliberately evading service. So here's how these two tools can enhance the effectiveness and value of the process server's work. In regards to skip tracing, locating hard to find individuals, skip tracing is the process of gathering and analyzing data to find someone's whereabouts when their subject location is unknown or has changed. For example, we turned up on the doorstep even this afternoon at an address, tried to serve someone, we were told they didn't live there. A skip trace just on our devices took about 10 minutes and we were able to locate a current address for the defendant, which was about a 15 minute drive away. So rather than muck around and have to report back to the client and say, hey, we can't find them, they don't live there, we got to find the person straight away and go and get them served immediately. So instead of reporting to a client, oh, we don't know where they are, which likes to conduct a skip trace, we've very quickly conducted one already, got the defendant served, which has sped up the court process because we're not delaying it at all, even though they don't live at the address that we were provided. So the benefits to a client are this increases the likelihood of successful service. If a respondent has moved, is using a false address or is avoiding detection, skip tracing helps the service It also helps a client by saving time and money instead of multiple failed attempts and wasted travel. Skip tracing can narrow down the correct address early. It also improves legal compliance because proper service is essential to ensure that legal proceedings are valid. Skip tracing ensures the right person is found and served according to legal standards. The other benefit for clients is it protects the case from delays or dismissal. Courts may dismiss or delay proceedings if the responder is not available. it hasn't been served correctly. Skip tracing supports timely and proper service. So what are some of the common skip tracing techniques that we use? Accessing databases. I'm going to give you a couple, electoral rolls, property records, utility connections, etc. phone records. There's plenty of other ways that we can access databases, plenty that are available to the public, but also to, that are only known by a lot of private investigators and process servers. We don't always share our keys with everybody. We develop these databases and our list of proper searches over time and many, many years of doing what we do. Another common skip trace technique is contacting known associates. That's where legally appropriate. So we may find a work address and be able to go to the work address and serve the person there. We may be able to find the person's new address simply by finding their spouse and obviously they haven't separated or divorced and they still live with their spouse so you may not be able to find the individual you can find their spouse go serve them at the spouse's address which is their address as well there's also public records and credit history checks that we can conduct as well there's lots of ways we can skip trace there's also pretext over the phone making phone calls and being able to determine an address simply through a phone call social media and online presence tracking is another one so there's there's lots of different ways that we skip trace and that we find a missing individual. We've got many podcasts about skip tracing techniques. Why don't you go have a look through the history on our podcast? Second thing I wanted to talk about that really assists in process serving and helps is just a real key for a client when they find a process server who does this is when the process server can conduct surveillance, when they can document evasion or confirm the presence of an individual. Surveillance involves discrete observation of an individual's home, workplace or routine to determine when and where to serve them. The benefits of this for a client is that we can serve evasive individuals. If a respondent is actively avoiding service, example dodging the doorbell or hiding, surveillance helps determine the best time to attempt service. Surveillance can also help us get service where we sit at an address and we know that they're not going to respond to the doorbell or the knock, but they will have to leave the address soon. And as they leave the address, as they're coming out of the front door or as they're getting in their vehicle or something like that, we can approach and serve them at that time. And also surveillance provides evidence of attempted service. Video photo surveillance can document an individual's presence and behavior supporting a claim of intentional evasion. We often take photos when we're at properties of the property. This is something our team does routinely. If we see the vehicle that was involved in the accident, we will straight away go and take a photograph of the vehicle as well. If it's a motor vehicle claim that we're serving, anything that we can get that will help prove that the person was and is at the address through surveillance just helps strengthen our evidence. The other benefit for a client is we can strengthen substituted service applications. See, if personal service fails, courts may allow substituted service either by post, email, publishing in a newspaper or simply leaving on the doorstep or in the letterbox at the address. Surveillance helps build the evidence required to support such an application. We will provide an affidavit in support of an application which will document our evidence, proving that the person does reside at the address and proving that the person is a then the courts will say, okay, personal service now is not required by hand, but by post or by leaving it at the address for the individual. The other benefit for surveillance is it reduces risk of false claims. If someone later claims they weren't home or never received the documents, surveillance will definitely disprove those assertions. We've had those cases before where someone will claim that they were never served with the documents, yet we have photograph or video footage of them at the property either receiving the documents or being made aware of the documents and we win every time in court so if you think you can just say you never receive the documents just be aware just be aware we have every right to photograph or video from the street We don't conduct surveillance on your property because that's illegal. But from the street, anyone can conduct, take videos, take footage. There is no law preventing that. So they're the two keys that I really believe just set a process server apart. When you're able to skip trace and when you're able to conduct good surveillance and take good evidence, those two keys can really help set up your clients. And that's why our lawyers and our clients really love us and love our work because we do these things every day. We locate individuals straight away. We conduct skip tracing on the run and we get individuals located. We also take photographs and videos and we get evidence of service so that if there is a contest, we've got the surveillance to prove that they were served properly. That's just what sets us apart. That's why we're better than the rest.

SPEAKER_00: 17:46

To enter our question of the day competition and be eligible to win a prize value at$100, simply email your question to info at downunderinvestigations.com. Now, let's get back to the podcast episode.

SPEAKER_01: 18:04

We've received a great question from a listener, and it's a very common question that we get. How do you find a missing person in Australia? Finding a missing person in Australia involves a mix of investigative techniques, access to public and proprietary data searches and sources, and sometimes a collaboration with law enforcement, legal professionals. Problem investigators play a crucial role in non-criminal or civil missing persons cases, such as locating estranged family members, debtors, witnesses, or persons avoiding legal contact. Here's how a private investigator in Australia typically finds a missing person. First step is initial information gathering. See, we want to get as much information that's available straight away as possible from a client or from a source. Stop. This includes gathering information such as the full name, middle name as well. Date of birth, any aliases, any nicknames, last known address or addresses or locations, employment history, known associates or relatives, social media accounts, and any previous interactions or communications. When was the last time you saw them or spoke to them and under what circumstances? Where did that happen? Getting as much information like that, getting the initial information together, forms the foundation of the case and helps identify any leads that we may come across. We have a form that we ask clients to fill in, which gives us as much information as possible. Sometimes there's sections left blank and that's understandable. So the first step is make sure you gather as much initial information as possible. Second step, database searches and public records. And some of these steps will overlap. Sometimes you'll go back and you'll go for and move between these steps. But database searches and public records are vital to a case. We have access to many public and specialised databases that are not easily available to the public. These include property records and land title searches, ASIC company and business name records, courts and bankruptcy databases, criminal databases, electoral rolls and motor vehicle registrations and that sort of thing. These searches can uncover new addresses for numbers or employment details, these searches can uncover a lot of other information which can lead to finding a person. So we may not through these searches find the individual, but putting all these things together definitely helps us find more information about the person, which helps us then get to the point of locating them. The third step is open source intelligence or OSINT as it's called in the industry. This is where we make extensive use of online and digital footprints, which can be incredibly revealing. Firstly, social media. You've got Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, etc. May show locations, check-ins, photos or connections. You may find who they spend their time with. You may find photos of them outside of their house or with their vehicle. All sorts of things. It's amazing how much information people leave open on their social media profiles. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Don't take photos of your kids in their school uniforms with their emblem of their school uniform clearly displayed because if they go to a school in a certain suburb and that certain suburb is on their logo on their shirt or on their jumper or on their school bag it's very easy to narrow down the search on where you will be with that child and it's also a great spot to pick you up if we wanted to conduct surveillance follow you from the school after you pick the child up we know that you're going to probably either head to the shops or you're going to head home i don't want to make you paranoid but don't put photos of your kids up with their school uniform emblems displayed so social media and that's just one way there's plenty of other ways that social media is used online directories this is another open source intelligence option that we've got online directories and forums people may leave digital traces through online memberships blog posts and old resumes there's so many chat websites out there where people will reveal things about themselves they'll put photos up, they'll put information up about themselves and they won't realise that a prior investigator can find that information and use that information to locate an individual another one is obituaries and family notices, this will reveal family connections or new names so let's say someone's got married and they have a new maiden name then that will be a name that we can use, or we know alright they're married to this person or these are their kids or these are their parents and that definitely helps find an individual by finding more information. The process of skip tracing is a specialised process of tracking someone who has skipped town or deliberately gone off the grid. So we use cross-referencing of the data from the different sources that we've just outlined. We track changes in name, phone number, addresses or even associates and it also involves tracing relatives or friends of the subject and that helps us find the individual that we're looking for. So if we we don't find the individual they might be highly evasive but maybe their spouse isn't maybe their kids aren't maybe their parents aren't but family will lead you to find the individual we're looking for skip tracing is particularly useful to find debtors legal respondents long-lost family and then there's physical surveillance where appropriate if a person is believed to be at a certain address but is avoiding contact or verifying residency is needed surveillance may be used to confirm presence identify routines or patterns or to document their act We must obviously conduct our surveillance legally and ethically under the Australian Privacy and Surveillance laws. We also collaborate when we're skip tracing with law enforcement when needed. If the case involves a minor, a potential crime or a person missing under suspicious circumstances, we'll typically recommend contacting police and even liaise with them. Even if criminal matters emerge, law enforcement has more extensive powers than private investigators. And we use discretion and legal compliance as well. Private investigators in Australia must act under strict laws, including the Privacy Act, Surveillance Devices Act in each state, and licensing requirements. Unlawful methods such as hacking, impersonation, GPS tracking without consent can result in legal action against an investigator. So common situations where PIs find missing persons are adoption and family reunion cases. debtors or absconders in civil or business matters, runaways or at-risk youths with parental consent, ex-partners in family law or custody disputes, missing witnesses or defendants in legal or insurance matters. So a private investigator in Australia brings a blend of investigative skill, data access and discretion to locate missing persons, especially in civil or personal matters where police cannot and will not assist. Our work can make a big difference in reconnecting families, enforcing legal obligations or resolving personal uncertainty. Make sure if you need a private investigator, you get in touch with us and we'll see how we can assist you.

SPEAKER_00: 25:21

Thanks for listening. To get in touch with the team at Down Under Investigation, check out our website at downunderinvestigations.com or call 1300 849 007 or email info at downunderinvestigations.com.