Can an AI-Written Police Report Hurt Your Crash Claim?
A growing number of police departments now use artificial intelligence to write the first draft of crash and incident reports. The most common tool, Axon’s Draft One, listens to the officer’s body camera audio and produces a narrative the officer is supposed to review before signing. If that narrative gets a detail wrong, says you were at fault, or leaves out the other driver’s admission, an insurance adjuster may treat it as gospel even though the report itself usually cannot be shown to a Michigan jury. This guide explains how AI is creeping into the reports that shape your claim, what the report can and cannot do legally, and the practical steps that protect you when a computer helped write the story of your crash.
How AI Ended Up in Your Crash Report
For decades an officer at the scene wrote the crash report by hand or typed it later from notes. Today many departments feed the officer’s body camera recording into a generative AI system built on the same kind of technology that powers ChatGPT. The software turns the spoken audio into a written draft within seconds. The officer is then expected to read it, fix mistakes, and approve it. The problem is that review is only as careful as the officer who does it, and studies of these tools have found that the AI can misunderstand context, mishear who said what, mistranslate, or simply invent details that were never spoken. Some of these systems are even built to delete the original AI draft once the officer approves it, so later no one can tell which words came from the software and which came from the officer. Michigan does not currently require police to disclose when a report was written with AI help, which makes catching an error harder unless someone goes looking for it.
That matters to you because the crash report is often the first document an insurance company pulls. Adjusters lean on the officer’s diagram, the listed sequence of events, and any notation about fault to decide how to handle your claim. When an AI wrote that narrative and the officer rubber-stamped it, an error can quietly travel from a flawed draft straight into the insurer’s file on your case.
The Good News: The Report Usually Cannot Be Used in Court
Here is something many injured people do not know. In Michigan, the police crash report generally cannot be entered as evidence in a civil lawsuit. The statute that requires drivers and officers to file these reports, MCL 257.622, is paired with MCL 257.624, which says a report required by that chapter is not available for use in a court action and exists mainly to collect crash statistics. In plain terms, if your case goes to trial, the other side cannot simply wave the report in front of the jury and say the officer blamed you.
So why worry about an AI error in a document a jury never sees? Because the vast majority of injury claims settle long before trial, and they settle based on what the adjuster believes happened. A report that wrongly suggests you ran the light can drive down the first offer, slow the negotiation, or give the insurer an excuse to assign you part of the blame. The report’s weak standing in court is your leverage, but only if you and your attorney know how to use it.
Where an AI Mistake Can Quietly Cost You Money
Michigan follows a comparative fault rule. Under MCL 600.2959, the money you recover for pain and suffering is reduced by your percentage of fault, and if you are found more than 50 percent at fault you cannot collect those non-economic damages at all. Your economic losses, such as wage loss and certain bills, can still be recovered even then, but they are reduced by your share of blame. This is the pressure point. If an AI-assisted report nudges the fault picture even ten or twenty percent in the wrong direction, the insurer will use that number to shrink every part of your claim.
Common ways an AI draft goes wrong include the items below. None of them are rare, and each one can change how an adjuster values your case.
- Mixing up which driver made a statement, so the other driver’s admission gets attributed to you.
- Misreading the direction of travel or the position of the vehicles, distorting how the crash happened.
- Dropping a key fact the officer mentioned out loud, such as the other driver smelling of alcohol or admitting they were texting.
- Inserting a confident-sounding detail that no one actually said, a known failure mode of generative AI.
- Garbling a witness account, especially when the speaker had an accent the software handled poorly.
What To Do If You Think the Report Is Wrong
You are not stuck with a flawed report. There is a process for correcting the record, and the sooner you act the better, because the body camera footage, dispatch logs, and witness memories that prove the truth do not last forever. The table below lays out the practical moves.
| Step | What it does | Why timing matters |
|---|---|---|
| Request a copy of the crash report | Lets you read exactly what the officer and the AI wrote about your crash. | You cannot fix an error you have not seen. Reports are usually available within days. |
| Write down your own account immediately | Preserves your memory of the sequence, the other driver’s words, and road conditions. | Memory fades fast, and your written account becomes a check against the AI draft. |
| Ask the department to correct factual errors | Officers can amend or supplement a report when a clear mistake is shown. | Corrections are easier while the officer still remembers the call. |
| Preserve the body camera footage | The footage is the actual record the AI was supposed to summarize. | Many agencies delete footage on a fixed schedule, sometimes within weeks. |
| Get independent evidence | Photos, dashcam, nearby cameras, and witness contacts back up your version. | This proof matters more than the report and disappears quickly. |
An attorney can send a preservation letter that legally puts the department and the insurer on notice to hold the footage and data before it is erased. That single step often saves the evidence that disproves an AI error.
Why a Lawyer Helps More When AI Is Involved
Insurance companies are not shy about leaning on whatever a report says when it favors them. When that report was partly written by software, an experienced lawyer can do two things at once. First, we hold the insurer to Michigan law and remind them the report cannot decide your case at trial, which weakens any threat built on it. Second, we go gather the real proof, the footage and the witnesses, that an AI summary may have gotten wrong. The goal is to make sure your claim is valued on what actually happened, not on a machine’s best guess.
अक्सर पूछे जाने वाले प्रश्न
Can the insurance company use the police report against me?
An adjuster will read it and may rely on it during settlement talks, which is where most cases are decided. But in a Michigan civil lawsuit the report itself generally cannot be admitted as evidence under MCL 257.624. The officer can still testify about what they saw, and the people quoted can be questioned. So the report shapes the early conversation but does not get the final word.
How do I know if AI helped write my crash report?
Not every department labels it, and some tools erase the original draft, which makes it hard to tell what the AI wrote versus the officer. If your department uses a system like Draft One, the body camera footage is the real source. Comparing the report against that footage is the most reliable way to spot an error, and an attorney can request both.
The report says I was partly at fault. Is my claim over?
No. A fault notation in a report is an opinion, not a verdict. Under MCL 600.2959 your recovery is reduced by your share of fault, and only barred for pain and suffering if you are more than 50 percent responsible. Independent evidence can rebut a wrong fault call, and that is exactly the kind of dispute worth bringing to a lawyer early.
How fast do I need to act to fix an error?
Quickly. Body camera footage and dispatch records are often deleted on a set schedule, sometimes within a few weeks, and witness memories fade. A preservation letter from an attorney can freeze that evidence in place. Separately, remember the hard legal deadlines: written notice for no-fault benefits within one year under MCL 500.3145, and generally three years to sue under MCL 600.5805(2).
Does it cost anything to have a lawyer look at this?
No. A consultation with our office is free, and we work on a contingency fee, which means no fee unless we recover for you. If you are worried an AI-assisted report is being used to lowball or deny your claim, it costs nothing to have it reviewed.
Worried an AI-written report is being used against you? Talk to a real attorney, free.
Attorney Manny Chahal will pull your crash report, compare it to the real evidence, and push back on any unfair fault call. Free statewide consultation. No fee unless we recover.
1-844-624-2425 पर कॉल करें