Advice needed after accident

Incredibly gutted.

Last Wednesday, both myself and my girlfriend had the day off. We were on our way to York to buy a new shower as ours had packed in the day before. I work in York, and my usual work commute is 22 miles door to door. I drive there and back every day and have done so since I bought the car in August.

The road from where i live to York is the A19. It's mostly national speed limit with three villages along the way, two of them 30mph zones. The first village is known as "Death Hill" due to the number of accidents that have happened there over the years. It is a very steep hill and people used to drive too fast over it (some still do), it has recently been changed from a 40 to a 30.

Pleased to say I negotiated this fine. About 5 miles prioir to getting here though I came up to the back of a couple of cars. The one directly infront of me was a black coupe. It was either a Honda or a Hyundai, but I honestly wasn't close enough to distinguish the difference in the badges.

I'm a sensible driver; I'm 22, but I was hit by a car 10 years ago and my girlfriend's dad was killed by a drunk driver. I certainly appreciate road safety. As a result, I was about 4 car lengths behind the car infront of me doing about 45 after we'd gone through death hill. As my girlfriend always says, "only a fool breaks the two second rule".

After death hill its back to national speed limit and over a slight hill. As I have said, I was doing about 45 and keeping station with the car in front. We accelerated very slowly out of death hill but there's no where to safely over take and I wasn't in a rush so I just kept my distance. we went over the crest of the hill and down the other side, so i could only see the car infront of me and not the car infront of him (or her)... when the coupe infront of me suddenly swerved round the car infront of me, complete with screeching brakes and everything. I immediately slammed all on and also tried to move round but my car doesn't have ABS brakes, so you tend to brake in a straight line. I unfortunately skidded down the hill into the back of the car that was infront of the car infront of me. If you get my meaning.

It was a big enough impact and both myself and my girlfirend were understandably shocked. The car that was infront of me drove off, leaving just myself and the car I hit. A Mercedes.

The Merc had a broken bumper, I asked the woman if she was OK but she just wanted my details, which we exchanged and she drove off. I called the police but there weren't interested. My car was blocking the road!

I got a farmer to give me a tow into a layby on the other side of the road and a copper showed up, breathalised me, checked my insurance, etc. He never asked me what happened. (Needless to say, i passed the breathaliser).

My car wouldn't start and my girlfriend was pretty shook up so I arranged for a lift for her from a family member and then payed £55 to have my car towed back.

It wasn't until the weekend when i got around to looking and found where the fuel isolation switch was. The car runs fine, with no damage to the radiator or anything. The crash damage is as follows: dented bumper, slightly buckled wings, one smashed headlight (passenger side) and the other headlight has a broke clip, damaged bumper and damaged front panel. More worryingly, part of the chassis arm is sticking through the bumper.

Now, I own a 1998 Honda Civic Illusion, 1.4litre engine. I'm no boy racer, I bought it because Honda have legendry reliability and because it was the only car I could afford at the time (£1400). The car its self is in insurance category 7 (!) so fully comp insurance was 5 pounds cheaper than the actual cost of the car(cheapest quote. followed martin's guide). So, Third party fire & theft was half that much, so i plummed for that instead. My reasoning being, I planned to buy a better car in the new year and it didn't seem very smart to pay for fully comp when i could have bougth two cars.

Rather annoyingly, 2 weeks ago I got a stone chip kicked up at my windscreen which actually prodcued a 14 inch crack. No fully comp, so I paid £125 to have that replaced. Infact, just last week, I bougth a set of 4 brand new Continental tyres for it (glad I did, accident might have been much worse without the grip).

Because there's no independent witnesses, and because I have only third party cover, my insurance company don't care very much , likely due to the fact it does seem to them i just ran into the back of another car.

It's extremely frustrating because I know it wasn't 100% my fault, i've yeat to hear a good explanation of why I came face to bumper with a near stationary vehicle. But anyway.

Because I don't have fully comp, I have to foot the bill unless the other pary accepts blame, which they won't. Fair enough. Except I had a quote from the garage that has serviced the car since it was first registered (and kept it in very nice condition)... They tell me the chassis is twisted slightly due to the uneven impact and will need to be put on a jig to correct it. They estimate that to cost at least £100, plus about 8 hours labour. Then there's parts and spraying and fitting... he said he'd be surprised if it wasn't at least £2K.

That's obviousley more than the car is worth. Insultingly, he offered me £250 for it in scrap because it had new tyres (which cost me £190 last bloody week!).

I really don't know what to do. I live in a fairly rural area and I need my car to get to work in a reasonable amopunt of time. I've been taking a train and 2 busses which works out at about £12 per day at the moment and adds at least an hour to it if everythign is on time. I spent about £20/week in petrol before.

There's not many cheap cars for sale locally, but about 15 miles down the road there is a nice 2001 reg civic for £3k, insurance cat 4... even with the accident on record i can get fully comp for it for about half the cost of the vehicle, but what do i do about my existing car and insurance (and road tax?)

Any advice or suggestions at all from anyone would be appreciated. As I've said, the important thing is that nobody was hurt(i wasn't even sore but my girlfriend had a sore back for a few days) and I just want to get things sorted out as quickly as possibly.

The thing I forgot to mention: a garage wouldn't have to pay for labour to fix the car and could replace the body work at cost, etc. With that in mind, do you think any garages would take the car in part exchange? It has a full service history, the rest of the car (including engine) are in excellent condition, its just too costly for me to fix...