An L.A. Crash Report Costs $19. The Form That Costs Nothing Has a 10-Day Deadline.

Three agencies sell the report, and none of them can sell you another's. The one document you fill out yourself is the one the DMV suspends licenses over.

You're wondering whether you even need the report. Two different errands are hiding inside that question, and they have almost nothing to do with each other. One is buying a copy of what an officer wrote down, which costs money and takes weeks. The other is a form you fill out yourself, which costs nothing, which no police department will do for you, and which the DMV suspends driving privileges over. The second is the one with a clock on it, so it goes first here.

The form with the 10-day clock

It is called the SR-1, and the requirement sits in section 16000 of the Vehicle Code. A driver "in any manner involved" in a crash on a street or highway has to report it to the DMV within 10 days if it caused bodily injury, a death, or damage "to the property of any one person in excess of one thousand dollars ($1,000)." You can file it yourself or have an insurance agent, broker or legal representative file it for you.

Three things in that sentence catch people out. The first is that fault is nowhere in it — the statute says involved, not at fault, so the driver who was rear-ended at a red light owes the same report as the driver who did the rear-ending. The second is the words "any one person": the $1,000 is measured against a single person's property, not against the total damage in the crash. The third is that the report is separate from anything an officer did. The DMV says so on its own accident-reporting page: the SR-1 is required "in addition to any other report made to the police, CHP, or your insurance company," and the trigger it prints for an injury is broader than the word suggests — "if someone is injured (no matter how minor the injury) or killed." The department takes it through the DMV Virtual Office online, and notes that a paper submission is "likely to take longer to process."

The consequence is not a fine. Under section 16004, the DMV "shall suspend the driving privilege of any person who fails, refuses, or neglects" to make the report, and the suspension stays in place until the department receives either the report or evidence that financial responsibility — insurance, in ordinary English — was in effect. The suspension is not a penalty for the crash. It is a penalty for the missing paperwork, and it stays until the paperwork arrives.

Section 16000 also says what happens when nobody ever files, in subdivision (c). If none of the parties has reported the crash to the department within one year of it, the DMV is not required to file a report on it and the suspension provisions do not apply. That is a description of what the code does after twelve months, not a plan. Ten days is the number to work from.

One more deadline applies if anyone was hurt. Section 20008 requires the driver of a vehicle involved in a crash "resulting in injuries to or death of any person" to make a written report within 24 hours — to the CHP, or, if it happened inside a city, to either the CHP or that city's police department. If an agency takes the report and is not the one responsible for investigating, the code makes that agency forward it.

Step one: work out who wrote the report, and don't guess

This county is policed by many separate agencies, and each one sells only its own paperwork. The CHP is blunt about the limit on its collision-report page: "The CHP can only obtain copies of collision reports we investigate." The same page adds the fix for anyone who cannot remember which uniform showed up — contact your local police department or a CHP office, and they can help identify the agency that investigated.

The fastest answer is usually already in your glovebox. The officer at the scene hands out a report number — the LAPD calls it a DR number — and that number belongs to one agency's filing system and no other's. If a crash happened on a freeway, the CHP is the likely author. Inside the City of Los Angeles, it is the LAPD. In unincorporated county areas and in the cities that contract with the Sheriff's Department, it is the Sheriff, whose own station list names 23 patrol stations, each with its own phone number. If the agency that responded was some other city's police department, none of the three sections below is yours, and the process is that department's.

If the LAPD wrote it

The department runs two doors, and the online one is closed for a month and a half after the crash. Its Request a Traffic Report page asks requesters to "allow a minimum of 45 days from the date of the collision to allow the report to be reviewed and approved for release" before trying online. Online is run for the department by LexisNexis.

Three categories cannot go online at all and have to go through the mail: any report that involves an arrest, a fatality or a juvenile. So does any report written before February 1, 2016.

The mail route costs $19. The page asks for a check or money order in that amount made out to the LAPD — "do not send cash" — with the Traffic Collision Report Request form, sent to the Los Angeles Police Department, Records and Identification Division, Document Processing Unit, P.O. Box 30158, Los Angeles, CA 90030. A recorded line at (213) 486-8130 carries status information.

If you can't print the form, the department will accept a written request, and it publishes the checklist of what that request has to contain: the type of report (traffic); your name, address and telephone number; the DR or incident number if you know it; your date of birth; the names of the parties listed in the report; the date and time; the location; the license plate number and state of registration of the vehicles involved; and your interest in the report — involved party, authorized representative, insurance company, or parent or guardian, with a release form or proof of relationship where those apply. It also has to carry the declaration "I declare this statement is true and correct," signed and dated.

Photographs are a second errand and a second check. The department's reports-and-services page says traffic collision photographs are released on a compact disc for $5, and asks that a requester wanting both prepare two separate checks. If no photographs turn out to exist, the page says you will be sent a Claim for Refund form to get the $5 back from the City Clerk's office. That is the design: you pay to find out whether there is anything to buy.

Do not plan a trip downtown to shortcut any of this. The same page opens with one line: "The Department's Public Counter is Closed."

Worth knowing if your crash also produced a crime — a hit-and-run, a stolen vehicle — because the price changes with the paperwork: a crime report from the same division is $28, not $19, and the page sets out the statutory fee waivers that come with it, including one free copy for victims of domestic violence within five years of the report, and one free copy for victims of sexual assault, stalking, human trafficking, or abuse of an elder or dependent adult within two years.

If the CHP wrote it

The CHP's route is a form called the CHP 190, Application for Release of Information. You print it, complete it, and submit it in person or by mail to a CHP Area office. The department publishes its whole fee schedule: $10 for a report of 1 to 25 pages, $20 for 26 to 50, $30 for 51 to 75, $40 for 76 to 100, and $10 for each additional 25 pages or part of one beyond that. "There is no extra charge for handling or mailing."

Payment is narrow. A personal check or money order made out to the California Highway Patrol goes with the request; the page asks that you write the report number on the check if you know it, says no cash by mail, and adds that the department does not accept credit or debit cards "at this time."

Two details on that page save real time. The first is that any CHP office can pull a report filed by any other one — the department's own example is a Los Angeles resident collecting a Redding collision report from a Southern California office. The second is that identification is mandatory in one of two forms: photocopy your driver license or photo ID and attach it, or have the CHP 190 certified by a notary.

And the CHP volunteers the cheapest option itself, in the middle of its own instructions: have your insurance provider obtain a copy and give it to you, which "may save you the report fee."

If the Sheriff's Department wrote it

Here the obstacle is not the fee, it is the door. The Sheriff's Records and Identification Bureau page opens with the current terms in capitals: the Public Services Section is open Monday through Thursday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., by appointment only, to pick up requests, and "walk-in service is not available at this time without an appointment." The number to call to submit a request and book that pickup is (562) 345-4441. The same page gives the bureau's phone hours as Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and the Public Services Unit's business hours as Monday through Thursday, so call before you drive to Norwalk.

Calling for an appointment is itself a small interview. The bureau says it will ask for your full name including any alias you want searched, your date of birth, the type of identification you intend to use with its number and expiration date, and the date and location of the incident, and that it reviews your legal authority to have the record before it books anything.

The mail route asks for one thing the other two agencies do not. Written requests go to the Records and Identification Bureau, Attention: Records Inquiry Non-Law Enforcement Section, 12440 East Imperial Highway, Suite 400 West, Norwalk, CA 90650, and must include your full name, your date of birth, the address the report should be mailed to, your signature, and — the department's words — "your valid notarized identification." Budget for a notary appointment before you budget for the fee.

Payment is the broadest of the three: cash, personal checks, cashier's checks and money orders made out to the Los Angeles County Sheriff Department or LASD, plus Visa, Mastercard, American Express and debit cards. The department does not print its report prices on the FAQ itself; they live in a separate fees for reports and services schedule, which is worth opening before you call so that the fee is not a surprise at the counter.

Who is allowed a copy, and what one is allowed to cost

Both questions are answered by a single sentence of state law, and it is a more generous sentence than most people expect. Vehicle Code section 20012 makes collision reports confidential — and then requires the investigating agency to disclose "the entire contents" of them, naming what that includes: the names and addresses of everyone involved, injured or witnessing, the vehicle registrations and descriptions, the date, time and location, all diagrams, the drivers' statements and the witnesses' statements.

It goes to "any person who may have a proper interest therein," and the statute lists them so the counter does not have to guess: the drivers involved, a guardian or conservator, the parent of a minor driver, an authorized representative, any named person injured, the owners of vehicles or property damaged, "persons who may incur civil liability" from the crash, and any attorney who declares under penalty of perjury that they represent one of those people. A passenger who was hurt does not need the driver's permission. A property owner whose wall was hit is on the list in their own right.

The same sentence sets the ceiling on the price: a request "shall be accompanied by payment of a fee, provided such fee shall not exceed the actual cost of providing the copy." We compared what the three agencies publish under that one ceiling. The LAPD prints $19 on its own page. The CHP prints $10 for a report of 25 pages or fewer on its own. The Sheriff's Department prints no figure on the page you land on and keeps it in a separate PDF. The statute caps what a copy may cost. It does not make three agencies agree about what a copy costs.

If there is no report to buy

Sometimes there is nothing on file. If no agency investigated, no agency has a report, and no fee will produce one — the record of the crash is then whatever you and the other driver exchanged, whatever your insurer opens, and the SR-1 you send the DMV. If you are not sure whether anyone wrote anything, the CHP's page names the way to find out: ask your local police department or a CHP office to help identify the investigating agency. Start there before you mail a check to anybody.

The short version

File the SR-1 with the DMV inside 10 days if anyone was hurt or any one person's property took more than $1,000 of damage, whoever caused it, and file it even though you also called the police. Find the report number the officer gave you and read which agency it belongs to. Send $19 and a signed request to the LAPD's P.O. box, or wait 45 days and use the online route unless the crash involved an arrest, a death or a juvenile. Send a CHP 190 and $10 to any CHP office, or ask your insurer to pull it and save the fee. Call (562) 345-4441 for the Sheriff, and have the notary done before you mail anything. And if a crash left anyone injured, the 24-hour written report under section 20008 came first.