Can anyone help - cyclist hits car - advice please

2sides2everystory

This thread has made me feel a bit hot and cold

I wonder if the neighbour's boyfriend was driving his car when the collision occurred? If so, I think the outcome could well be wrong.

If not, then I understand a little better although I might still be questioning how the vehicle was parked.

We all have accidents and some involve our own negligence and in that case it is right and proper to do what we can to fix things afterwards.

However, this is a cul-de-sac. Families with young kids play in it.

Cars and kids are not a good mix. Kids have to know this for their own safety - I am guessing this child probably did and was so concerned when a car appeared that he overbalanced. Motorists are however the people who need to know it best.

Motorists should always give cyclists a lot of leaway in case they wobble. If it's kids on bikes in confined spaces, then the motorist better think extremely hard before he drives near them because if any overbalancing by a kid on a bike is going to occur it is most likely to occur when a car enters their play domain.

Maybe the car was parked. In that case there is still a question of whether the car was parked restricting where kids play. I am uncomfortable about stopping kids playing outside their own house in the cul-de-sac just because people leave valuable delicate objects perhaps rather carelessly in confined places where children are normally most welcome to play. There are cul-de-sacs and cul-de-sacs of course. Some are confined spaces with cars parked nose to tail both sides; some less so. I have intimate knowledge of regularly using one as a child and three as a motorist with his eyes peeled. And the one I knew intimately as a child was perhaps the one where I was most careless as a young motorist - luckily no harm done.

This is one reason why Quentin reminds us not to outright accept liability. It is too easy to get swept along by whomever might be leading the discussion immediately after an accident. Swapping insurance details and letting the insurers get on with it might have been the most moneysaving course to have taken, and might have yielded the most correct outcome (which may still have been the same outlay to the garage, and may still have found the OP's son liable, but with the OP's household insurers paying rather than the OP).

However, when it boils down to keeping the peace with neighbours, then the OP probably knows best in this case.

Thank you to the OP for coming back and finishing the story.