How to read a police report (and your crash report's codes)

A police report is an officer’s written record of an event, filed with the agency and identified by a case number. There are two kinds, and they are different documents: an incident or offense report for a crime (theft, burglary, vandalism), and a traffic crash reportfor a collision, which is what most people mean when they say “the police report” after an accident. Neither one decides fault. A crash report records observations plus, in most states, the officer’s opinion about what contributed, and your insurer and any court reach their own conclusions. To read one, use the method the forms are built for: find the box, find the numbered list with that box’s name on your state’s code sheet, and read the entry. The numbers are not a secret language. They are an index into a public PDF.

What you are holding is a form covered in two-digit numbers, a hand-drawn sketch, and a paragraph of officer shorthand. There is no single national police report; there are agency forms in every state, built from the same underlying question set and coded against a list your state publishes as a PDF. This guide covers the shared skeleton, two states’ code sheets side by side as a worked example, the injury codes, the fault question, how to buy a copy, how to correct an error, and what to keep once the claim closes.

For scale: the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration counted 6,180,241 police-reported crashes in 2024 in its April 2026 overview. Almost every one of those reports is read by exactly one civilian: the person the crash happened to. Of the 2024 total, 72.3% were property damage only, 27.1% involved an injury, and 0.6% were fatal.

Police report vs. accident report: two different documents

A police report and an accident report are usually two different documents. A police (incident or offense) report records a crime. A traffic crash reportrecords a collision and is built around per-unit driver, vehicle, and insurance blocks. In everyday speech “police report” covers both, but the paperwork does not. A crash report is the larger of the two because it repeats an entire driver, vehicle, insurance, and damage block for every unit involved, and the difference in size is the difference in what the two documents do.

Two other pieces of paper get called a police report and are neither of these:

• An arrest report documents that a specific person was taken into custody, with the charges and the booking details. It is a separate record from the incident report that led to it, and it is usually requested separately.
• A driver exchange-of-information form is the card or slip an officer hands out at a minor crash instead of writing a full report: names, plates, and insurance details, and nothing else. It is not filed with the state, and an adjuster asking for the crash report will not accept it.

Practical consequence: if you were in a collision and an adjuster asks for “the police report,” they want the crash report, and the two are often retrieved through different channels at the same department. If your car was broken into, the incident report is the one your insurer needs, and it will never appear in a state crash database.

The skeleton every crash report shares

Crash report forms look wildly different from state to state, and underneath they ask about the same things in a different order. That is not a coincidence. NHTSA publishes the Model Minimum Uniform Crash Criteria (MMUCC), now in its 6th Edition (2024), a voluntary guideline defining about 100 data elements a crash report should capture, descended from the ANSI D.16 manual on classifying motor vehicle traffic crashes. It has been revised roughly every five years since 1998. MMUCC is a guideline rather than a form. States are free to implement their own coding, and the 6th Edition dropped the numeric codes the 5th carried, which is precisely why every state now publishes its own code sheet and why the same number means different things across state lines.

So there is one shared set of questions underneath fifty different forms. Here is that shared set. Hover or tap any field to highlight it; the full explanation is in the list either way.

Read the header block first, then read your ownunit block character by character. A transposed digit in a VIN or a license number is a common error, and the easiest kind to get fixed, and it is the one that quietly follows you into an insurer’s system and a car’s title history if nobody catches it.

The code sheet method: how to decode any number in any box

Most of a crash report is numbers, and the number by itself is meaningless. It is an index. Texas states the rule right on the top of its own key: the numbered fields on the CR-3 refer to the numbered lists on this code sheet. So the method is three steps, and it works in every state:

1. Find the box name.Not the number, the label printed above or beside it: “Contributing Factors,” “Light Condition,” “Vehicle Body Style.”
2. Find the list with that name on your state’s code sheet. Texas calls the document a Code Sheet (CR-3CS). New York calls it a Cover Sheet (MV-104COV), and its instructions to police live in form P-33. “Overlay” is the colloquial term people use for both; the reconstructionists’ association ACTAR keeps a state-by-state index of them. If you do not know what yours is called, search “[your state] crash report code sheet”; it is almost always a PDF on the state DOT or DMV site.
3. Read the entry at that number. Same number, different list, different meaning. That is the whole trick.

Here is what that looks like with two states next to each other. The left column is what an officer would say happened; the middle and right columns are the numbers the two states would write down for it.

Texas codes from the Factors and Conditions list (Code Sheet 38) in the Texas Crash Report 100 instruction manual, version 29 (2025 Edition). New York codes from the MV-104COV cover sheet as documented in DMV form P-33. Both read on August 21, 2026. Code sheets are revised, and older PDFs of both still circulate, so check the current version before relying on a number.

Two things this table teaches beyond the codes themselves. First, the states disagree about how finely to slice the same behavior: Texas splits distraction into a driver-inattention code and a separate in-vehicle-distraction code, where New York folds them into one. Second, a circumstance can get its own number in one state and be folded into a broader entry in the other, the way Texas codes speeding over the posted limit separately while New York handles it under unsafe speed. An absence in the codes is not evidence of anything.

What does 96 mean on a police report?

96 has no single national meaning. It is an entry in one numbered list on one state’s code sheet, and the same number means something different in a different box or a different state. High numbers in the nineties are frequently catch-alls: Texas uses 98 for Other in its contributing-factor list and 99 for Unknown in its injury list. That is a pattern rather than a rule, and it varies list to list on the same sheet. If a page tells you flatly what 96 means on a police report, it is guessing on your behalf.

A worked example

New York requires that every crash have at least one apparent contributing factor coded, and gives officers room for two per vehicle, in boxes 19 through 22. Its instructions walk through a case where a driver who had been drinking runs a stop sign: the officer records 2 in Box 19 and 17 in Box 20. Two codes, two separate factors, one vehicle. Read a report with two numbers in adjacent boxes and that is what you are looking at, not a single code split in half.

KABCO: the five codes for injury severity

If someone was hurt, this is the part of the report you will be reading closest, so it is worth knowing exactly what the letter does and does not represent.

Next to every person on the report is a single letter, or a number standing in for one. That is the KABCO scale, and it is the most consequential coded field on the form, because the officer assigns it at the roadside, without medical training, minutes after the crash.

Definitions from NHTSA’s Model Minimum Uniform Crash Criteria, 6th Edition (2024). Texas comparisons from the Texas Crash Report 100 manual, version 29 (2025 Edition), and its predecessor code sheet. All read on August 21, 2026.

Two things make the A code weigh more than it looks. First, it has federal legal significance: MMUCC’s Suspected Serious Injury (A) is the national definition of a serious injury used in federal highway safety performance measures under 23 CFR Part 490 and the state highway safety grant program at 23 CFR Part 1300. When you read about serious injuries in a state safety report, this letter is the underlying data. Second, the definition of A is a specific enumerated list of injury types rather than an open-ended judgment about severity, which is why the officer is asked to observe rather than diagnose.

That distinction is not academic. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin linked Wisconsin crash reports to actual medical records from 2009 through 2017 and found the officer’s KABCO rating overstated injury severity in roughly 64% of the linked cases, and understated it in only about 2.5% to 4%. If the letter next to your name looks wrong to you in either direction, remember that it is a coded field on a form rather than a diagnosis, and that the medical records govern your treatment and your claim.

Is Unit 1 the driver at fault?

No.On a crash report, Unit 1 and Unit 2 (or Vehicle 1 and Vehicle 2) record the order in which the officer documented the vehicles, not a determination of who caused the crash. Different officers and different agencies number differently: the first driver contacted, the striking vehicle, the vehicle nearest the officer’s approach. There is no national rule making Unit 1 the at-fault party. Fault, to the extent the report addresses it at all, lives in the contributing-factor codes and the narrative, and in some states, Texas among them, those are explicitly labeled the investigating officer’s opinion.

Texas says so on the form’s own instructions. Its CR-100 instruction manual titles the relevant section “Contributing Factors (Investigator’s Opinion),” instructs the officer to code a factor when the investigation “does have enough data to render an opinion,” and titles the free-text block “Investigator’s Narrative Opinion of What Happened.” The word opinionis in the state’s own headings, twice.

So it is worth separating the two kinds of content on the page. Observed facts: the date, the location, the vehicles, the road surface, the light, the damage, who was present. Judgments: the contributing factors, the diagram, the narrative, and often the injury severity. Facts are hard to argue with. Judgments are what an insurer weighs against everything else it has.

The insurer runs its own liability determination regardless. The report is one input alongside the photos, the statements, the damage patterns, and the policy language on your declarations page. GEICO puts it directly in its own claims material: it is always willing to re-examinea liability decision if you have information it has not seen. If that determination ends in a total loss rather than a repair, the damage codes on this report are the start of a paper trail that ends on the vehicle’s title record: our guide to what a branded title means covers what a salvage or rebuilt brand does to the car afterward.

Courts are more restrictive than most people assume, in an asymmetric way. Under Federal Rule of Evidence 803(8), a police officer’s observations in a public record are excluded against a defendant in a criminal case, while a civil case may admit factual findings from a legally authorized investigation, unless the opposing party shows the source or circumstances indicate a lack of trustworthiness. Some states go further on the driver’s own report: Florida provides that a crash report or statement a driver is required to make may not be used as evidence in any trial, civil or criminal. (This is the hearsay question, and 803(8) is the public-records exception to it.) None of that makes police reports inadmissible as a blanket rule, and none of it turns one into a verdict.

One more reason to hold the report loosely: it is a partial census of what happens on the road. NHTSA’s own economic study of crash costs estimated that about 60% of property-damage-only crashes and about 32% of injury crashes are never reported to police at all (DOT HS 813 403, February 2023), which put total US crashes near 14.2 million in 2019 against roughly 6.7 million reported. Hit-and-run is the sharpest version of the same problem: NHTSA counted 2,758 fatalities in hit-and-run crashes in 2024, including 1,749 pedestrians, a quarter of all pedestrian deaths. Where no officer ever files a report, there is no independent record of the crash at all, which is why your own photos and notes matter more than they seem to at the time.

Reading an incident report (theft, burglary, vandalism)

If your garage was broken into or your car was keyed, the document you are reading is an incident or offense report, and it is organized around a case rather than around vehicles. The fields worth finding:

• Case number.The agency’s identifier. This is what your insurer will ask for, and what any follow-up call with the department starts with. It is also the field most worth copying into your claim notes the day you get it.
• The agency identifier (ORI). A code identifying the reporting agency itself. It matters when a report crosses jurisdictions, or when a records request lands at the wrong department.
• The offense classification.A coded description of what was reported, in the agency’s UCR or NIBRS scheme. It classifies the report for crime statistics, and it can differ from whatever a prosecutor eventually charges.
• The parties, by role. Victim, suspect, witness, reporting person. Being named as a suspect here carries no legal status on its own, and an empty suspect field does not mean the case is over.
• Case status. Open, under investigation, closed, cleared, unfounded. This is the field that has no equivalent on a crash report, and the one to check before you assume nothing is happening. It can change after you get your copy, which is a reason to note the date on the version you hold.
• The narrative.The officer’s account of what was reported. On an incident report the narrative is doing more work than on a crash report, because there is no diagram and usually no coded factor list.

For theft and vandalism claims, the incident report is often a precondition for payout, so the practical sequence is: file promptly, get the case number in writing, request the copy once the report is finalized, and keep it with the claim correspondence rather than in the email it arrived in.

How to get your copy

There are three channels, and which one applies depends on your state and the agency, not on you. State portal, the agency’s own records unit, or a third-party portal the agency contracts with. Work them in this order.

A note on the letters. If a crash report with your name on it becomes available, you may start receiving mail from law firms and chiropractors within days. That is a consequence of state records access, not a leak. Separately, and often confused with it, the federal Driver’s Privacy Protection Act (18 U.S.C. section 2721) restricts how personal information from motor vehicle recordsmay be disclosed, with permitted uses including insurance underwriting and claims investigation and use in connection with litigation. The DPPA governs DMV records rather than crash reports as such; crash report access is set by your state’s own statutes.

Correcting an error on the report

You can usually get a wrong fact fixed. You almost never get an opinion reversed. Knowing which one you are dealing with before you pick up the phone saves a week.

That last step is the part law-firm pages tend to skip, and it is the part that lasts longest. A corrected report is two documents. Six months later, an adjuster who has only ever seen the first one will quote the wrong plate number back at you, and the fix is to produce both, in order, on request.

The paper trail a single crash creates

The report is one document out of three to five, and they have different owners, different deadlines, and different retention periods. Assuming the officer’s report covers your obligations is a common and expensive mistake.

The self-report duty is the one people miss. California’s DMV says it in one line on its own accident-reporting page: an SR-1 report is required in addition to any other report made to the police, CHP, or your insurance company. It is due within 10 days when there is an injury however minor, a death, or property damage over $1,000. New York works the same way through form MV-104 under Vehicle and Traffic Law section 605: a driver must file within 10 days when any one person’s property damage exceeds $1,000, or anyone is injured or killed, and the DMV may suspend your license until the report is filed. The officer’s report does not satisfy either duty.

And increasingly there may be no officer’s report at all. Some departments have stopped responding to minor non-injury crashes. Knoxville, Tennessee’s police department made that change effective September 1, 2022, telling drivers to exchange information and file the report themselves. Where that is the local policy, your documentation is entirely your own: photos before the cars move, the other driver’s license and insurance card, a witness name and number, and your written account the same day.

What to keep, and where

Keep the report until the claim closes and the deadline to sue has run out, which is longer than the repair takes by years. Our own retention data puts a police report at about 7 years and a crash report at about 6; the retention timeline tool and the full retention guide have the reasoning and the rest of the table. Keep the whole set together in one place you actually file things, not just the report: the supplement if there is one, the claim correspondence, the photos, the repair invoice, and the policy that covered the car on that date. A crash report on its own answers almost nothing a year later. The set answers everything.

This is the small job Granite is built for, and we will be straight about where we fit. Drop in the crash report and Granite reads it, pulls out the case number, the crash date, the drivers, the VINs, and the insurers, and files it alongside the rest of the vehicle’s documents, so a year later you can askfor the report number, or the other driver’s carrier, and get the answer with a citation to the page it came from. The whole set stays findable, and because these pages carry license numbers, VINs, and addresses in one place, it stays encrypted at rest.

What Granite is not: a law firm, a DMV, an insurance company, or a police records unit. It does not request your report, file your SR-1 or MV-104, dispute a citation, argue liability with an adjuster, or give legal advice. This guide is general information about how these documents are structured, not advice about your situation. If your crash involved an injury or a disputed fault finding, talk to a lawyer in your state, and bring the whole document set with you. Granite is free for your first 25 documents.