crashed & car insurance due in Sept..

In_Search_Of_Me

Hi all,
Am concerned as I had a nasty crash yesterday (I was on main road, driver pulled out of side road without stopping) & the right side of my car is a mess so will take a while to sort. Plus driver saying he wouldnt accept full liability (why?!!) so concerned that this may take a while as I accept no responsibility as I was doing nothing wrong!!

Problem is insurance runs out in Sept and need to know if I am in the middle of a claim can I change insurers? All advice greatly appreciated!

Thanks

ff

Kay_Peel

Poor Fishface! Sorry to hear about that - it's lucky that you were both able to drive away from the experience without injury. It's one consolation.

This happened to my son recently and he had to make some hard decisions. Because he's under 25 years, any claim would have sent future premiums though the roof. Any claim would have made it impossible to get insurance, let alone switch companies.

So he had the car towed away (40 pounds)
Got an estimate for the damage - telling them it was not an insurance job, so not to quote any silly numbers. It looked worse than it actually was and came to 400 pounds.
He was back on the road within 5 days - new wing and light cluster, and paint.

Of course, he ought to have stood his ground and made the other bloke cough up. He should have pursued him through his insurance company.

Yeah right.

And pay 250 pounds excess?
And pay an extra grand a year in insurance until he was 25 years?
Or take out a private law-suit and get bogged down in the courts?

The sums didn't work out.

Perhaps you might be faced with the same decision to preserve your claims record and your ability to switch painlessly between insurance companies.

It doesn't seem fair when you were not at fault and the other bloke is just 'trying it on' and doing what insurance companies advise at-fault drivers to do: deny everything and not accept liability.

Sorry to be so pessimistic. I hope someone else can provide some better solution.

Kp

gazza975526570

Wether the driver admits responsibility or not is largely irrelevant and will depend on what his insurers think.

Providing he tells them the same story as you and he doesnt try to say that you were speeding (speeding is impossible to proove anyhow without any independent witnesses) were there any?

Yes you can change insurers - no problem and they will still deal with your claim in the same way.
Who are you insured with? some dont affect your ncd/make you pay your xs if an accident isnt your fault anyhow (irrespective of if they get their costs back) have you rung and regd the claim?

Astaroth

You certain can switch insurers mid claim but one problem can be that your NCD is affected until the claim is resolved. If you stay with your current insurers this becomes easy to handle as they will automatically reinstate your NCD and adjust your premiums as appropriate.

If you do shop around you will have to declare the ongoing claim and potentially a lower NCD but when the claim is resolved you can then contact them again and advise of the outcome and they will then (probably) amend the policy but this can be a little hassel.

The difficulty with these sorts of claims is that the 3rd party can give totally different versions of events and contrary to others on here, I would say that damage to vehicles is rarely a good way of determining which is "the truth".

Hopefully he will just be honest and say that he failed to see your son etc in which case it will be fairly straight forward. If he makes allogations of giving misleading signals or speeding things get a little more complex.

Dipak

Hi fishface,

Simple answer to your question is yes you can switch. I was involved in a RTA in December 2005 and my car has been in the garage 5 times since (more recently 2 weeks ago) because the garage didnt repair the car properly. I changed insurers in January and havent had any problems getting my car repaired under my old policy.

It really annoy's me that people dont admit its their fault as my friend (person 1) was involved in a serious RTA couple of years back where the car that hit her (person 2) jumped a red light and went straight into the side of her which resulted in he breaking her arm and one passenger in her car getting a serious cut to the head (thank god for seat belt otherwise it would have been a lot worse). Person 2 got out of his car and start swearing and alsorts at her and then another guy 'a so called witness' started saying he saw it all and it was person 1's fault. To cut a long story short, little did they both know that this accident was caught on traffic camera's and the police confirmed that person 2 was to blame and the so call witness what a liar.

So my advice to you would be to see if there are any camera's where your accident happened and fingers-crossed there is and this will show your innocent. Also another thing which has worked for couple of people i know is taking it through court. If your insurance company threaten court action that usually scares the person and they admit their fault.

Hope this has help and if you need any more info give a shout.

Cheers D

Wyndham

Dipak wrote:

It really annoy's me that people dont admit its their fault

While I agree with the sentiment, legally your insurance policy will have a clause in it which states that you should not admit any liability at the scene of an argument. Basically, if you've said 'sorry it was me' then that can be used in court, and there are times when this isn't actually right and your insurers won't like losing because of it.

However, after saying that, swearing and blaming are also both out of order!

lisyloo

It really annoy's me that people dont admit its their fault

Firstly it's not in your interests that they do because this could invalidate their insurance.

Secondly no matter what the person says the insurance company will seek to reduce it's costs.
If there are no witnesses then it usually means that it's goes 50/50.

Did you get any witnesses?
This is really important to your case.

kiwigirl

Hi Fishface,

Sorry to hear about the smash - I can sympathise as today after filling mine with a tankful of diesel then putting 2 new tyres on ready for the MOT on sat my neighbour went and smashed into mine "didn't see me in his mirrors due to amount of rubbish he was taking to dump". He's owned up to this as his fault, so hope he doesn't claim it's mine now, can't really as my driver's side door has been bolted shut in impact.... 3 days after another repair to the opposite side due to someone smash / run on mine too. I think when his insurance realises it's not going to be cheap to replace the damage they'll be a bit more aghast - was expecting a small runaround as replacement but as it's someone else's fault insurance will fork out for similar car to mine and then bill his insurance company.

Yes, you can change your insurance company mid way just say there's a pending accident on so and so date.

Coincidentially exactly 5 1/2 years ago I had a serious RTA and we were able to swap insurer then no problems - lost my NCB for a bit but got that back in the end, just make insurers aware of the whole story though.