some swine hit my car, drove off.. ive tracked them down.. what next???

logie28

Hi,
Friday morning i woke up, got in the car, arrived at work and noticed some one had smashed my headlight and scuffed the rear quarter panel of my car :mad: :mad:

Luckily i live on a cul de sac, luckily the offender left a nice blue mark down the side of my car, luckily my neighbour witnessed the bump and pointed me to the house the offenders where visiting.

The cpl whom the offenders where visiting where shocked but did not try to cover the incident up..helps that i have a witness!!

Ive had a garage look at the car, major problems, i thought initially just my headlight was smashed, unfortunately the bumper is loose, two grills cracked and some front end, pushed in damage, as well as a nasty scrape to rear quarter panel,, BAD REVERSING!!!

I ve asked the neighbours to tell their friends to contact me with insurance details,, I'm still waiting...... two days on,

With a stroke of luck i spotted the car today a few streets away at a local shopping area, could not find the driver though!!! ( regualr visitors to a quite street) and got the reg!!

What do you think i should do next, im 3rd party F&T.. im starting to think they may not be insuerd, where do i stand??

Bennifred

I'd inform the neighbours that if you don't hear from their friends in the next couple of days that you'll be passing the details to the police.

Treadway1

Well you could wait, but personally, Id go straight to the Police now. Youve done the moral thing by informing your neighbours and asking for their friends to contact you before taking any action, and yet you are still waiting for a response. The person who drove into your car didnt show any moral standards by driving off, so I think youve done more than enough already.

The driver has committed an offence of driving away from the scene of a damage only accident contrary to Section 154 Road Traffic Act 1988. Id say you should go to the Police Station asap aswell, as you really should rpeort a matter like this within 24 hours. If you explain the situation down the local cop shop though, they will most probably give you a self reporting accident form, where you can write down everything thats happened and how youve found out who it was. Then it will get passed to a Traffic Criminal Justice unit who will send out a notice to the owner of the other car.

Also, have you told your insurance company yet?

logie28

contacted my insurance company today, apparently there is a form to fill out (over the phone) i told them i will ring and complete form when i have all the details of the driver,, i. e name reg,,, only just found reg out this evening.

Thanks for replies,
TBH, I thought the police would be a waste of time,, the way i hear they deal with car CRIMES,, will ring them in the morning.

SolicitorMidlands

Call the police. You've done the right thing letting insurers know - they will get in contact with other party's insurers.

li'l_p

I had a similar thing happen to me, not long after I had bought my first car. Someone reversed at high speed out of my parent's road - a cul-de-sac - (where I lived at the time) and crunched along the side of my car. Thankfully a neighbour had CCTV and had captured the culprit as they reversed past their house further down - it was sickening to watch as you could hear the bang and scrape as they hit it! We took the footage to the police who took a statement at the time and said they would see what they could do... we didn't hold out much hope as we could only make out that the car was white and the reg was barely visible. We felt like we were wasting police time...

A few weeks later, my Mum spotted a white car as it passed her locally, and lo and behold it had red paint transfer right across the back end - eaxctly where it would have made contact with my car. She managed to note the first few digits of the reg, which wasn't great but we knew it was a start and thankfully that the car was at least still local and still had the damage.

Literally 3 days later, I then passed the local petrol station and glanced across at a white car (we were obsessed at this point) and by 'coincidence' noted that the car had the same first few digits... and the same red paint damage to the rear. I noted the full reg and duly got onto the police.

The police ended up catching up with the chap, and he was taken to court and fined over it. I can't remember how much, but I was just glad he was caught and made to pay the consequences, as it is awful when people do that and think nothing of driving off.

Hope you get things sorted.

Treadway1

logie28 wrote: »

contacted my insurance company today, apparently there is a form to fill out (over the phone) i told them i will ring and complete form when i have all the details of the driver,, i. e name reg,,, only just found reg out this evening.

Thanks for replies,
TBH, I thought the police would be a waste of time,, the way i hear they deal with car CRIMES,, will ring them in the morning.

Whist alot of people think that their local Police are a waste of time, this is actually quite a simple thing for them to do. As I say, you just fill in the form at the station, hand it to the station officer and they send it off to their local Traffic Criminal Justice Unit who do all the rest of the work. Id be surprised if your insurers dont ask you to report this to the Police anyway TBH.

fto

logie28 wrote: »

Hi,
Friday morning i woke up, got in the car, arrived at work and noticed some one had smashed my headlight and scuffed the rear quarter panel of my car :mad: :mad:

Luckily i live on a cul de sac, luckily the offender left a nice blue mark down the side of my car, luckily my neighbour witnessed the bump and pointed me to the house the offenders where visiting.

The cpl whom the offenders where visiting where shocked but did not try to cover the incident up..helps that i have a witness!!

Ive had a garage look at the car, major problems, i thought initially just my headlight was smashed, unfortunately the bumper is loose, two grills cracked and some front end, pushed in damage, as well as a nasty scrape to rear quarter panel,, BAD REVERSING!!!

I ve asked the neighbours to tell their friends to contact me with insurance details,, I'm still waiting...... two days on,

With a stroke of luck i spotted the car today a few streets away at a local shopping area, could not find the driver though!!! ( regualr visitors to a quite street) and got the reg!!

What do you think i should do next, im 3rd party F&T.. im starting to think they may not be insuerd, where do i stand??

How did you know if was a pig ???.
Did you see the pig hit your car.....if so, ask your local farmer if he has any swine missing.

P.S A blue pig should be easy to trace.

logie28

fto wrote: »

How did you know if was a pig ???.
Did you see the pig hit your car.....if so, ask your local farmer if he has any swine missing.

P.S A blue pig should be easy to trace.

I know it was a pig... obvious really!!! only a pig would drive off and not leave their details!!!

p.s , swine is a derogatory term i can use on this forum without it being censored, privately i refer to him in a seriously offensive name,, rhymes with.......................... runt..!!! (of the farmers litter!!!!!!!!)

fto

Is this the guy.

dacouch

If you have Third Party Fire & Theft Cover and have ignored Midlandsolicitors advice not to take out Legal Cover you can speak to them and they should be able to claim off the other drivers car insurance for the repairs to your car and any other out of pocket expenses you may have occured such as loss of earnings etc.