Police Crash Reports and Evidence in Harrisburg, PA Getting the Report and What It Cannot Do

What the statute requires of the police

Section 3751 of the Vehicle Code governs police reporting. A department that investigates a reportable crash and prepares a written report, whether at the scene or later by interviewing participants or witnesses, must forward an initial written report to the department within fifteen days of the accident, with a supplemental report to follow if the initial one is incomplete. That fifteen-day figure is the reason a report is often unavailable in the first two weeks. It reflects a statutory processing window rather than an office being slow.

Who may obtain a copy, and what it costs

Subsection (b) requires police departments, on request, to furnish a certified copy of the full report of the investigation to any person involved in the accident, to that person's attorney or insurer, and to a list of governmental recipients. The cost of furnishing a copy may not exceed fifteen dollars, except in a city of the first class, where the ceiling is twenty-five dollars. Harrisburg is not a city of the first class, and the City of Harrisburg's own records information states a fifteen-dollar charge for a crash report, payable by check or money order, with copies obtainable at the records window at 123 Walnut Street on the second level during posted hours.

Where state police crashes are handled

Collisions investigated by the Pennsylvania State Police follow a separate request process. The Commonwealth's service page states that crash reports are available fifteen days after the date of the crash and that the fee is twenty-two dollars, payable to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, with requests accepted online or by mailing the signed application form. The application, form SP 7-0015, asks for the crash date and time, the case number, the county and municipality, the route and location, the reason for the request, and the requester's relationship to the crash. The mailing address is the Crash Reports Unit at 1800 Elmerton Avenue in Harrisburg, which is also where the state police headquarters sits.

The admissibility rule almost nobody expects

Subsection (b)(4) contains the provision that reframes how the report should be used. The copy of the report is not admissible as evidence in any action for damages or criminal proceeding arising out of the motor vehicle accident. The report is therefore an investigative summary and a roadmap, not an exhibit. What it does is identify the people, vehicles, insurers, witnesses, and diagrams that the underlying admissible evidence can be built from. Anyone treating the officer's fault notation as the decisive document is relying on a paper the statute keeps out of the damages case.

When the department can decline, and what remains

Subsection (b)(5) permits a department to refuse to furnish the complete investigation copy while criminal charges are pending against anyone involved, unless the Rules of Criminal Procedure require production. In that situation the file has to be built from other sources. Section 3746 helps, because where an accident is reported and investigated, each driver is to be given a signed statement showing the accident was reported, which confirms a report exists even before a copy is released.

The driver's own report

Where no police officer investigated the crash, the duty shifts. Section 3747 requires the driver to submit a written report within the period the statute fixes, and the same section makes those reports confidential and limits their evidentiary use, allowing a certificate that a report was filed to be admitted for the fact of filing. Confidentiality is a feature rather than an obstacle: the report satisfies a legal obligation without becoming a statement to be argued over later.

Evidence the report will not preserve for you

A report records what an officer observed and was told. It does not preserve footage from the convenience store across the intersection, the damaged vehicle before repair, the shoulder debris before it was swept, the maintenance history of a commercial vehicle, or the phone number of the witness who left before the officer arrived. Those items are held by third parties on their own schedules, several of them measured in days. Written preservation requests sent early are the mechanism, and they cost nothing but attention.

Reading this page

Fees, processing times, and office hours are set by the agencies involved and can change; the amounts described here are the statutory ceiling and the figures those agencies published. This page is general information for readers around Harrisburg and Dauphin County rather than advice about obtaining or using a report in a specific case, and questions about a particular claim belong with the attorney whose office advertises on this site or another licensed Pennsylvania attorney.