Should You Sign the Agreed Accident Form? When it is lawful, and what it waives

Article 81 of the Highway Traffic Code sets out what everyone involved in an accident must do: stop without creating a further hazard, leave the scene as it is including the traces and evidence, show identity, address, licence, registration and the date and number of the insurance policy on request, notify the competent officers and wait for them (KTK 81/1, sub-paragraphs a to e). There is one exemption and it is narrow. Where the accident caused material damage only, and everyone involved considers an officer unnecessary, they may leave the scene — provided they record the position between them in writing (KTK 81/2).

That written record is the agreed form. The Traffic Regulation names it: where all the drivers involved agree that officials need not attend, they draw up a Maddi Hasarlı Trafik Kazası Tespit Tutanağı, sign it together, and leave (KTY 152, second paragraph, (a)). The same paragraph tells you how to do it. Where possible, photograph the scene, then move the vehicles off the carriageway so as not to cause a second collision or block the traffic, and complete the form there (KTY 152, second paragraph, (b)).

Why it is worth doing properly is stated in the Code. In accidents on the road resulting in material damage only, where the parties agree and the act does not constitute another offence, no judicial prosecution is carried out (KTK 83/3). Those last words carry the weight. The agreement disposes of the traffic matter. It does not dispose of a drink-driving file, and it disposes of nothing at all if someone was hurt.

The second paragraph of KTY 152, sub-paragraph (ç), lists six situations in which the report must be drawn up by the traffic police — or by the general police where traffic police are absent or not sufficient. If any of them is present, an agreement between the drivers is not the lawful route, and signing a form anyway does not make it one.

The form is not only a description of a collision. It carries a consequence written into the Regulation, and most drivers sign without being told it.

Parties who have left the scene under an agreement are deemed to have accepted that the loss will be met by their insurers or directly by themselves, and may not afterwards ask the authorities to draw up an accident report (KTY 152, second paragraph, (c)). Three things follow.

• There is no second attempt. For accidents resulting in material damage only, where the vehicles have already been removed from the scene, the traffic police and the general police draw up no damage-assessment report at all; damage is then established by applying to the insurers or to the competent courts (KTY 156/a-5). The paper you signed is the record.
• You wrote it yourselves. An official report would not have handed you a fault percentage either — those who draw one up record only which traffic rule each side broke, without stating a ratio (KTY 156/a-3). But it would have been written by someone trained to read the marks on the road, from the scene as it stood. Yours is written by the two people who disagree about it.
• Primary fault is a defined list. KTK 84 sets out twelve situations in which a driver is treated as primarily at fault, among them rear-ending, entering the lane used by oncoming traffic, overtaking where overtaking is prohibited, and failing to give way at a junction. A sketch you signed showing your car a metre from where it was can place you inside one of them.

The form is in Turkish. It asks for a sketch, for boxes to be ticked describing the manoeuvre each vehicle was making, and for two signatures. Nothing in it is explained to you in your language, and nobody at the roadside is under a duty to explain it.

The interpreter guarantee in the Criminal Procedure Code does not reach this document. CMK 202 provides a court-appointed interpreter for a defendant or a victim who does not speak Turkish well enough to explain themselves, and CMK 202/3 extends the same to suspects, victims and witnesses heard during the investigation. A form completed between two drivers is neither an investigation nor a hearing. What that right actually covers is set out on the page on interpreters and language in a Turkish case.

• Translate every box before you sign, the sketch included. A phone translation of the completed form takes two minutes and is the only reading you will get.
• Photograph it signed, before anyone drives away. The exemption in KTK 81/2 rests on a document made between the parties. If the other driver keeps the only completed copy, the paper showing your departure was lawful is not in your hands.
• Exchange details whether or not you sign. Identity, address, licence, registration and the policy date and number are owed on request under KTK 81/1-c on their own footing, and a failure carries its own administrative fine under the last paragraph of KTK 81.

The agreed form exists for damage. The moment a person may be injured it is the wrong document, and using it does not turn an injury accident into a damage one.

Injury opens a criminal file of its own. Negligent injury under TCK 89/1 carries four months to two years' imprisonment or a judicial fine, increased by half where the injury caused a bone fracture or one of the other outcomes listed in TCK 89/2. Prosecution normally depends on a complaint (TCK 89/5), and the person entitled to complain has six months running from the day they learned of the act and of who committed it, not from the day of the accident (TCK 73/1 and 73/2). A passenger who felt nothing at the roadside can complain months later. The file also falls inside criminal mediation under CMK 253, which is the route most visitors are never told about; how it runs is set out on the page on traffic accidents causing injury.

And the departure becomes a second charge. Since 12 February 2026, a driver who leaves the scene of an accident involving injury or death without the permission of the police and outside a necessity is sentenced to one to three years' imprisonment, and the driving licence is withdrawn for two years (KTK 81/3, as replaced by article 27 of Law no. 7574). The agreement exemption in KTK 81/2 is written for material damage; it is no answer to that charge. Where there is any possibility that someone is hurt — a passenger holding their neck, a pedestrian who walked off — notify the officers and wait. What KTK 81 requires, and what follows when it is not done, is set out on the page on leaving the scene of an accident.