If a head-on crash happened in a Salem parking garage and there's any chance bad signage, broken mirrors, dead lighting, missing arrows, or a stupid traffic pattern helped cause it, start preserving evidence immediately.

Not next week.

Not after the adjuster calls back.

Right now.

Because once a public entity starts muttering about sovereign immunity, the whole game becomes: can you prove a dangerous condition existed, and can you prove it before the footage gets overwritten, the paint gets touched up, and witnesses disappear back into normal life?

Photograph the garage like you're documenting a crime scene

The wrong-way driver matters. The garage itself may matter just as much.

In Salem, that can mean a city-owned structure, a county facility, or a garage tied to a public building downtown near Center Street, Court Street, or around state offices where traffic design is often tighter than it should be. If the crash happened in a publicly connected garage, don't assume the police report will capture the layout problems. It usually won't.

Get photos and video of:

• every entrance and exit, including one-way signs, arrows, height bars, lane markings, mirrors, gates, ticket machines, and any faded or blocked markings
• the exact floor, ramp, turn, and stall area where the head-on happened
• lighting conditions, shadows, burned-out fixtures, glare, puddles, oil, concrete columns, and blind corners
• damage to both vehicles before they're moved if possible
• skid marks, broken plastic, glass, scraped paint on walls or pillars, and the final resting positions
• any security camera visible in the garage, plus nearby businesses or building cameras aimed toward entrances
• weather and visibility outside the structure at the time

Do this wide, medium, and close. Then do it again from the driver's-eye view in both directions.

A single photo of a dented bumper is basically worthless compared with a slow video showing a blind ramp, no convex mirror, and a tiny one-way arrow hidden behind a concrete column.

Witnesses vanish faster than you think

In a garage crash, witnesses are usually random office workers, courthouse visitors, hospital staff, state employees, or people hurrying back to their cars. By the next day, they're gone.

Get names, phone numbers, email addresses, and a quick voice memo if they'll give one. Ask the simple stuff: what lane was each car in, which direction each car came from, whether they saw signage, and whether the wrong-way movement looked easy to make because the garage was confusing.

If someone says, "That ramp is always a mess," write that down too.

That's not courtroom poetry. That's evidence that the defect wasn't brand new.

Dashcam footage is gold, and you may not get a second shot

If your spouse had a dashcam, pull the card now and copy the entire file. Don't just save the clip. Save the full sequence before and after impact.

If the other driver had a dashcam, send a written request immediately telling them and their insurer to preserve it. Same thing for any rideshare, delivery van, fleet vehicle, or nearby parked car with a camera.

And if the garage has security video, assume it may be overwritten in days, not months.

A preservation letter to the garage operator or public entity should specifically demand all surveillance footage for the crash window, plus footage from entrances, exits, payment kiosks, and interior levels. General requests get ignored. Specific ones are harder to dodge.

Get the Salem police report, but don't worship it

If Salem Police responded, get the report as soon as it's available. If it happened on public property with a different agency involved, confirm who actually wrote it.

The report helps with driver identity, insurance info, witness names, and basic diagrams. Good. Use it.

But police reports in garage crashes often miss the design problem completely. An officer may write "driver entered wrong way" and move on. That does not settle whether the lane markings were garbage or the mirror was missing.

In Oregon, fault still matters a lot because of modified comparative fault. If your side gets pushed to 51% or more, recovery is blocked. So don't let the only written version be one short report and an adjuster's lazy theory.

Preserve phone records before they're gone

If the other side starts hinting distraction, or if distraction may explain why the wrong-way driver missed signs, phone data matters.

Save your spouse's call log, text timestamps, location history, and battery screenshots now. Back them up. Do not rely on the phone keeping everything forever.

For the other driver, phone records usually won't just fall into your lap. But you can still preserve the issue early by demanding their insurer and the driver keep the device data, call logs, texts, app activity, and location history from the crash period.

That matters because carriers don't keep everything forever, and apps sure as hell don't.

Don't overlook the money angle

Oregon's minimum liability coverage is still just 25/50/20. A head-on crash with serious injuries can blow through that in a blink, especially if your spouse is an accountant now staring at scans, follow-up care, and weeks of cognitive symptoms.

So document every bill, every mileage trip to treatment, every missed contract or tax-season work opportunity, and every note about headaches, dizziness, light sensitivity, and memory problems.

A garage crash can look simple.

Then the public agency says immunity, the driver says the garage tricked them, the insurer offers garbage, and half the evidence is already gone.