After a wreck in Five Points, on Glenwood, or anywhere else inside the city, the official crash report is one of the first documents worth having. It is not a finding that settles fault. It is the officer’s written account of the people, the vehicles, and the conditions, and it is often the document an insurer asks for first. Raleigh makes a city report available at no charge to the people who are allowed to receive it. The State Division of Motor Vehicles keeps a separate copy, with its own request form and a statutory fee.
A driver in a reportable crash has a duty to call the police. G.S. 20-166.1 says the driver must immediately, by the quickest means of communication, notify the appropriate agency. If the crash happened in a city or town, that agency is the police department of the city or town. If it happened outside a city or town, the agency is the State Highway Patrol, the sheriff’s office, or other qualified rural police of the county. A reportable crash, in G.S. 20-4.01(33b), means a motor-vehicle crash that results in death or injury of a human being, or in property harm of one thousand dollars or more, or in any amount of harm to a vehicle seized under G.S. 20-28.3.
If you struck a parked or unattended vehicle, G.S. 20-166.1(c) also requires a report to the owner within 48 hours, orally or in writing, even when the crash is not reportable. That report must include the time, date, and place, your name, address, and driver’s license number, and the plate number of the vehicle you were driving.
The city report in Raleigh
The City of Raleigh’s official page on how to obtain a police report says crash reports are free of charge if you visit the counter, and that you can also use the online system. The Police Department counter is at Police Headquarters, 6716 Six Forks Road, Raleigh, NC 27615. The telephone is (919) 996-3325. The clerk is in on weekdays from 8:30 in the morning until 5 in the evening, and is closed on holidays and weekends.
An electronic copy through the Department’s crash-report portal is limited. You must be involved in the crash, or a lawyer representing someone who was involved, or an insurance company representing someone who was involved. The portal asks for the report number without the hyphen, plus either a driver’s license number of one of the drivers or a VIN of an involved vehicle. The report comes as a PDF. If the crash happened before January 2021, the portal directs you to the Division of Motor Vehicles instead. If you are not in one of the allowed groups, federal driver-privacy rules require that route as well.
Never treat the city report as the only proof. Photograph the scene when conditions allow, write down witness names, and keep the exchange information you received at the scene under G.S. 20-166. If a fact in the report is wrong, note the date you noticed it and keep your own written account. The report is useful. It does not make up the entire file.
The Division copy, and the statutory fee
The Division of Motor Vehicles also holds crash reports. Individuals who were in the crash can request a redacted copy in person or by mail. Individuals cannot order that copy online. The request uses form TR-67A, which is not a fillable form and has to be printed. Mail requests are processed in about ten business days from the time of receipt, and payment is by check or money order payable to NCDMV, as the Division’s crash-report page explains.
In this market you can also walk in at the Raleigh Central Services / License Plate Agency at 4121 New Bern Ave., Raleigh, NC 27616. Go to the door marked Vehicle Registration, not the driver-license door. The Division also has a Huntersville office, which is a long drive from Five Points and is not the local counter for this site. Ask the Raleigh counter how a walk-in request is handled the day you arrive. The Division’s customer-service telephone is (919) 715-7000.
G.S. 20-42 sets the Division’s fee for an accident report at six dollars and fifty cents. Confirm the amount the Division is collecting when you submit the form, in case a later change has been posted on the official page or at the counter.
How the report may be used later
G.S. 20-166.1(i) draws a line between kinds of reports. A report made under that section by someone other than a law-enforcement officer, or a Civilian Traffic Investigator employed under G.S. 160A-499.6, is without prejudice, is for the Division’s use, and shall not be used as evidence, or for any other purpose, in a trial arising out of the accident. A law-enforcement officer’s report, and a medical examiner’s report, may be used as evidence as the rules of evidence allow. Those officer and medical-examiner reports are open to public inspection at reasonable times. The Division must give a certified copy of one of those reports to a member of the public who requests it and pays the G.S. 20-42 fee.
An investigating officer must make a written report of a reportable crash within 24 hours, and must include information on financial responsibility for the vehicle driven by the person the officer identified as at fault. That “at fault” line is the officer’s identification, not a court judgment, and it sits beside North Carolina’s contributory-negligence rule. Do not assume a box on the form ends the legal question.
If a city vehicle, a state vehicle, or a road condition may be part of the story, get the report early anyway, then read the city-and-state claims guide on this site. If the other driver carried none of the required coverage, or too little of it, request the report early as well, because uninsured-motorist and hit-and-run claims have their own notice steps. The report is the starting document. The filing windows still run on their own clocks.