How the triage really works
Police resources follow harm. A hit-and-run with injuries — especially serious ones — gets investigative attention: canvasses, footage requests, paint analysis, database runs on partial plates. A clipped bumper in a beach lot gets a report number. That's not indifference; it's arithmetic — and knowing it tells you what to do next.
What the report does even when nobody investigates
Three jobs: it satisfies the UM coverage condition (the reason to file same-day, every time), it timestamps the event for every insurer who later asks, and it puts your case in the system so that a driver caught next month for something else can be connected to yours. File it promptly regardless of what you expect it to trigger — the mechanics live in the 48-hour playbook.
The canvass that actually finds drivers
The pier district, the hotels, Coast Highway storefronts, residential doorbells along the flight path — footage exists for most urban hit-and-runs; it just cycles in days, faster than triage moves. A same-week private canvass — you on day one, preservation letters behind you — recovers identification police would have found too late or never sought. When a canvass produces a plate, hand it to the detective; cases reopen for delivered evidence.
And if nobody's ever found
The claim pays anyway — your UM coverage needs proof of the event, not a defendant. That's the quiet good news under this whole topic, and it's what the free case review establishes in one call: what your policy owes, what the evidence supports, and whether the investigation matters to your recovery at all.
