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What Is the Georgia SR-13 Accident Report Who Files It and How Is It Used to Establish Fault in a Civil Claim?
The SR-13 is the Georgia Department of Driver Services’ “Personal Report of Accident”, a form for crashes no police officer is called to report. The form itself says it “is for your personal use and should not be mailed to the Department of Driver Services, as it will be destroyed upon receipt.” No one files it with the state, there is no 30-day filing deadline, and it is not the police crash report.
What the form says about itself
The form opens with two sentences that answer the basic questions about it: “This form should be completed when a traffic accident occurs and a law enforcement officer is not called to make a report. This report is for your personal use and should not be mailed to the Department of Driver Services, as it will be destroyed upon receipt.”
Its two pages ask for the date, day, and hour of the crash, the location precise enough to find the scene, each vehicle and its estimated repair cost, each driver’s and owner’s name, address, license number, and birth date, whether each vehicle had liability insurance, damage to other property, injured people, and witnesses, followed by the signature of the person completing it. Used that way, it is a structured worksheet for the details you will need when you call your own insurer or the other driver’s insurer.
The police report is a different document
A crash report written by a responding officer is a government record, which the Open Records Act calls a Georgia Uniform Motor Vehicle Accident Report. Under the Open Records Act, O.C.G.A. § 50-18-72, individual Uniform Motor Vehicle Accident Reports are not open to the general public, but “any person or entity whose name or identifying information is contained in” the report is entitled to a copy, personally or through a lawyer, and others may obtain one with a written statement of need. How to request that report and other public records is explained in using Georgia’s Open Records Act to obtain police reports and GDOT data.
Confusing the two documents leads to two mistakes: treating a personal worksheet as an official filing, and treating the driver as the person who controls the official report.
Who has a legal duty to report a crash
The reporting duty in Georgia runs to the police, not to the Department of Driver Services. O.C.G.A. § 40-6-273 requires the driver of a vehicle in an accident “resulting in injury to or death of any person or property damage to an apparent extent of $500.00 or more” to “immediately, by the quickest means of communication, give notice of such accident” to the local police department inside a city, or to the county sheriff or the nearest state patrol office outside a city.
Two other duties sit beside it:
- Stop and exchange information. Under § 40-6-270(a), a driver in a crash involving injury, death, or damage to an attended vehicle must stop, give a name, address, and registration number, show a license on request, and render reasonable assistance to anyone injured.
- Report a hit-and-run to keep uninsured motorist coverage. When the other driver is unknown, § 33-7-11(c) makes the § 40-6-273 report a condition of recovering under your own uninsured motorist coverage. The police call matters here; an SR-13 kept in a glove box does not satisfy it. See hit-and-run liability and the insurance that applies when the driver flees.
Can the SR-13 establish fault?
Not as a state record, because the state does not keep it. Georgia’s Motor Vehicle Safety Responsibility law adds a separate rule for the reports and actions it governs: under O.C.G.A. § 40-9-41, neither “any accident report filed with the Department of Transportation, the action taken by the Department of Driver Services pursuant to this chapter, the findings, if any, of the department upon which such action is based, nor the security filed as provided in this chapter shall be referred to in any way, nor shall they be any evidence of the negligence or due care of either party, at the trial of any action at law to recover damages.” An administrative step taken under that chapter is therefore not proof of who caused the crash.
A completed SR-13 that a driver keeps or hands to an insurer is a private paper. Whether the other side can obtain it in discovery, and whether a statement in it can be used at trial, are questions for Georgia’s discovery and evidence rules applied to that paper, not something the form decides. Fault in a civil claim is proved the way it is in any negligence case: the officer’s observations, photographs, vehicle damage, witnesses, video, vehicle data, and the parties’ testimony.
The officer’s written report is not automatically evidence of everything in it. Georgia’s hearsay exception for public records reaches, in civil proceedings, “factual findings resulting from an investigation made pursuant to authority granted by law, unless the sources of information or other circumstances indicate lack of trustworthiness” (O.C.G.A. § 24-8-803(8)), and the exception gives way where another law provides otherwise. A statement that a driver or witness gave the officer is not the office’s own finding, so it needs its own route into evidence:
| Evidence | The rule that governs it |
|---|---|
| What the officer saw at the scene, told in court | A witness testifies to matters within the witness's personal knowledge (§ 24-6-602) |
| The officer's written report | The public records exception above, limited by its trustworthiness condition (§ 24-8-803(8)) |
| A bystander's statement written into the report | Hearsay within hearsay, admissible only "if each part of the combined statements conforms with an exception to the hearsay rule" (§ 24-8-805); otherwise the bystander testifies in person |
| The other driver's statement written into the report | Offered against that driver, "The party's own statement" is an admission that the hearsay rule does not exclude (§ 24-8-801(d)(2)(A)), as long as the report itself also comes in |
| Your own SR-13 | A private paper; statements in it offered against you can be treated as your own admissions (§ 24-8-801(d)(2)(A)), and the § 40-9-41 bar speaks of reports "filed with the Department of Transportation", which the SR-13 is not |
How a traffic-law violation can itself show negligence is covered in negligence per se for traffic violations in Georgia.
When the SR-13 is worth filling out
- No officer came, or the officer did not write a report. The form organizes the facts while they are fresh: time, place, plates, insurers, and witnesses.
- You need to give your insurer an account. The completed form is a ready summary; keep a copy of anything you give an insurer.
- A witness may leave. The witness section is a reminder to get names and phone numbers before people go.
What the form does not do: it does not report the crash to the police, it does not satisfy § 40-6-273, and mailing it to the Department of Driver Services accomplishes nothing because, in the department’s words, it “will be destroyed upon receipt.”
Sources
- Georgia Department of Driver Services, SR-13 Personal Report of Accident (copy published by Kennesaw State University risk management).
- O.C.G.A. §§ 24-8-803, 33-7-11, 40-6-270, 40-6-273, 40-9-41, 50-18-72 (text as published in March 2024); §§ 24-6-602, 24-8-801, 24-8-805 (text of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, November 2022 release; no amendment listed in the 2023 to 2026 summaries of general statutes enacted).
This page describes Georgia law as of October 2026 for general information. It is not legal advice and does not create an attorney-client relationship.