Post-Accident Review Form

Key Takeaways

• Complete the evidence preservation checklist on this form before starting the review section. Evidence must be secured before evaluation begins.
• The corrective actions section is what makes this form useful beyond the incident itself. An action without an owner and a due date is not an action.
• This form documents an internal review. Treat it as a sensitive document and route any requests to share it outside the company through legal or safety counsel.

What this form records

The post-accident review form documents the internal evaluation following a serious incident: what happened based on available evidence, what contributing factors were identified, what preventability determination was made if applicable, and what corrective actions were assigned.

Complete the form promptly after the review takes place — within a week of the incident in most cases. A review that happened but wasn't documented produces no useful record. A form completed weeks later from participants' recollections is less reliable than one completed at the time.

Evidence checklist section

The form should include a checklist of evidence that was preserved and reviewed: driver incident report, police report, photos, dash cam footage, ELD records, telematics data, maintenance records, and witness contacts. Check off each item that was reviewed, and note the status of items that weren't yet available.

This section is completed before the evaluation section. Reviewing an incident without confirming which evidence was and wasn't available leads to conclusions that may need to be revised when additional evidence surfaces.

Contributing factors and preventability

The contributing factors section should be specific: not 'driver error' but 'following distance insufficient for road conditions at the time.' Not 'mechanical issue' but 'brake adjustment identified in post-incident inspection.' Specific contributing factors lead to specific corrective actions.

If the company makes a preventability determination, document the specific basis — what the driver could or couldn't have done differently based on available evidence. A determination without a documented rationale is harder to stand behind if it's later questioned.

Protecting the review record

Mark the completed form as an internal review document. Do not file it with the driver's personnel file or include it in claim submissions without guidance from legal counsel.

If litigation follows the incident, the form and the review process may be subject to discovery requests. Early involvement of legal counsel on how to structure the review — particularly around privilege protections — produces a more protected record than a well-intentioned review conducted without that guidance.