Starting today, drivers in Latvia can fill out an agreed notification about a traffic accident in the messenger WhatsApp, reported the Latvian Bureau of Motor Insurers (LTAB).
Filling out the agreed notification in WhatsApp is allowed in cases where there are no casualties in the traffic accident and the participants can confirm their identity using SmartID or e-Paraksts. The built-in chatbot in a dialog form asks questions about the time and circumstances of the accident, witnesses, and damages. Some data, including the location of the incident and information about the vehicles, is generated automatically, which reduces the time for processing.
One of the main advantages of the new solution is the elimination of the need to draw a diagram of the accident — instead, photo and video documentation of the circumstances of the incident is provided. The main goal of the implementation is to increase the number of drivers who handle minor traffic accidents independently, without calling the State Police.
The Chairman of the Board of LTAB, Jānis Abašins, noted that, despite cases where police involvement is necessary, in many situations calling them is not justified. He also emphasized that this is a unique solution: chatbots in messengers have not been used for filling out agreed notifications in Europe before.
In the near future, LTAB plans to make this function available in other popular messengers as well. At the same time, the electronic processing of the agreed notification in the "LTAB OCTA" application, which has been in operation since 2018, remains available. According to LTAB, currently about 20% of such traffic accidents are processed electronically each month.
