Crash on I-26 near Summerville: who writes the report, and how to get it

The Summerville Police Department investigates many crashes in town, and it sends people to CrashDocs for the reports it writes. On I-26 the officer is often a trooper with the South Carolina Highway Patrol. The Highway Patrol investigated 80,380 of South Carolina's 143,801 collisions in 2024, and 3,468 of Berkeley County's 6,536, according to the SCDPS Fact Book. If a trooper worked your crash, the Highway Patrol directs you to SCDMV for the collision report, not to the town.

At the scene of an investigated crash, the officer gives each driver or owner an insurance verification form. The Highway Patrol calls it the FR-10, its “mandatory insurance verification form.” It is not the full report. It is a form you have to send back. Under Section 56-9-350, the driver or owner must return the completed and verified form to SCDMV within 15 days of the date the officer delivered it. A form that never comes back is prima facie evidence that the vehicle was uninsured.

Keep a copy, because the SCDMV request form for the full report asks for the FR-10 number. If you lose the form, the Highway Patrol says to contact the troop office where the crash happened.

If no officer investigated a crash that caused injury, death or property damage of $1,000 or more, Section 56-5-1270 requires the driver or owner to send SCDMV a written report, on Form FR-309, within 15 days of the crash.

The collision report itself is Form TR-310. SCDMV says it is more detailed than the paperwork you received the day of the collision. When an officer investigates a crash with injury, death or $1,000 or more in apparent damage, Section 56-5-1270 has the officer forward the report to SCDMV within 24 hours after finishing the investigation. SCDMV does not publish a processing time. An official copy is available only after SCDMV has received and processed the report.

You can request it online, at any SCDMV branch, or by mail with Form FR-50. The fee is $10 per report. How to get a South Carolina accident report walks through each option. Frost Law Group can also request the 911 audio and any dash-camera or body-camera video, along with the findings of the Highway Patrol's Multi-disciplinary Accident Investigation Team (Troop Nine) if that team investigated the crash.

It is easy to assume a crash near Summerville happened in Dorchester County. On I-26 it usually did not. SCDOT's interchange diagrams place Exit 194 (Jedburg Road), Exit 197 (Nexton Parkway), Exit 199 (North Main Street, US 17A) and Exit 203 (College Park Road) in Berkeley County, and Exit 205 (US 78) in Charleston County. SCDOT's 2024 Dorchester County traffic counts show I-26 in Dorchester only from I-95 to SC 27.

The county matters because each one has its own courthouse. The Berkeley County Courthouse is in Moncks Corner and the Charleston County Courthouse is on Broad Street in Charleston, and both counties sit in the Ninth Judicial Circuit. The Dorchester County Courthouse is in St. George, in the First Circuit. Which court hears a lawsuit is a venue question a lawyer checks early. The Berkeley County numbers show why this stretch draws attention. I-26 at College Park Road (113 collisions) and I-26 at Jedburg Road (103) were the county's two most crash-prone intersections in 2024, as recorded in the SCDPS Fact Book. Where car accidents happen in Summerville covers the other corridors.

After a bad wreck, two questions tend to come up on Nextdoor for Summerville and in r/Charleston. “How do I get my accident report?” And “The trooper put me at fault, what now?”

For the first, request the TR-310 from SCDMV, or ask Frost Law Group to request it. For the second, the officer's contributing-factor findings are an opinion formed at the roadside, not a verdict. Section 56-5-1290 says the reports required by Sections 56-5-1260 through 56-5-1280 may not be evidence of either party's negligence or due care at the trial of a damages case. Fault is decided on all the evidence, and video, vehicle data and witness statements can all bear on it.