Head on smash caused by other driver..now he's refusing to admit blame..HELP!!

InsideInsurance

It sounds like it is a narrow lane collision in which case 50/50 is a very common settlement because of the difficulty of proving one version of events over the other.

If it is then each party pays 50% of the other sides case (ie vehicle damage, loss of earnings, hire car, injury, solicitors fees etc)

Without independent witnesses or hard evidence it ultimately becomes one persons word over another and if it goes to court effectively its simply who the judge believes. Unless there is going to be a clear bias towards one party (eg 50 yo middle aged woman in sensible family car with kids -v- teenage male driver in hot hatch with 4 mates going to a club) then most insurers will not consider funding court action.

chanz4

vaio wrote: »

Don’t be a tit, this was a head on collision between two vans moving at speed, the sort of accident where it is really easy to end up dead

Van drivers do drive stupid, my mrs when she has hers does also for some reason. But all the op seems to be more intrested in is pi claim

Crazy_Jamie

chanz4 wrote: »

Van drivers do drive stupid, my mrs when she has hers does also for some reason. But all the op seems to be more intrested in is pi claim

This was a head on collision on a national speed limit road, with the estimate given in the thread putting the combined speed of impact at approximately 100mph. As vaio rightly pointed out, people die in collisions of this nature. Your comment that you are 'surprised' that there are injuries in such a collision is utterly moronic. We know the OP's friend was taken away in an ambulance, and given the speed of the vehicles at the time of collision he will be fortunate indeed if his injuries don't have some notable level of severity to them. In the circumstances criticising the OP or his friend for being concerned with the PI claim aspect of this incident, or the legal side generally, is absolutely ridiculous.

carlcumbria wrote:

That being the case, and all things considered would you recommend fighting to win the 100% blame side of things?
Assuming he does deny responsibility would the other guys insurance firm then take it to court, and if so assuming he used solictors etc, and it was then later decided he WAS 50% responsible would he be liable for HIS legal costs only still, or at all? If he won the 100% would the other party have to pay his costs?

Ultimately your friend should be seeking to instruct a firm of solicitors to act for him in relation to the claim on a 'no win no fee' basis (known as a Conditional Fee Agreement). Whilst his insurance company would seek to recover the insured losses if the third party was found to be at fault, they will not seek to recover damages for personal injury and other 'uninsured' losses. Any firm of solicitors will assess the prospects of success within a claim before taking the cases on a CFA, and this initial assessment will give your friend some indication as to his prospects. He will then be advised as to whether to fight the case at trial or accept a compromise on liability by his solicitors, who will obviously continue to assess the evidence as the case progresses.

If your friend's case is taken on a CFA, a policy of ATE Insurance will be taken out on his behalf as well, which will cover his liability as regards costs consequences. So in practice, if your friend's case is taken on a CFA, he won't practically have to worry about costs unless he does something silly like committing fraud or unreasonably rejecting the advice of his solicitors.

Finally, I really do hope your friend's injuries aren't too serious. It sounds like a horrible accident regardless of where the blame lies.

chanz4

Claims companys will only take non none fault, they wont progress 50/50 ones

SteveFromAccounts

Crazy_Jamie wrote: »

This was a head on collision on a national speed limit road, with the estimate given in the thread putting the combined speed of impact at approximately 100mph

There is no such thing as combined impact speed. Please watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8E5dUnLmh4 ... and read this: http://warp.povusers.org/grrr/collisionmath.html

Enjoy :money:

vaio

nice video & link.....

To be fair to Crazy Jamie I suspect his training is legal (or was it classical ballet?) rather than engineering/physics/accounting but really it doesn't alter the thrust of his post, hitting a wall at 50 is still the sort of accident that can easily result in death or life changing injuries

Crazy_Jamie

SteveFromAccounts wrote: »

There is no such thing as combined impact speed. Please watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8E5dUnLmh4 ... and read this: http://warp.povusers.org/grrr/collisionmath.html

Enjoy :money:

Thanks for that. I'm sure that information was sitting somewhere right in the deepest corner of my brain, but I had evidently forgotten about it and those were two interesting links.

vaio wrote:

To be fair to Crazy Jamie I suspect his training is legal (or was it classical ballet?) rather than engineering/physics/accounting but really it doesn't alter the thrust of his post, hitting a wall at 50 is still the sort of accident that can easily result in death or life changing injuries

My training was predominantly legal. I only dabbled in classical ballet.

And indeed, the thrust of the post is the same. The video link was actually probably additionally helpful in that it showed the damage a head on collision can cause at 50mph. Still very much a collision that can cause serious injury or death.

carlcumbria

Thanks for all the replies folks, it's certainly gave my friend something to think about, but regardless he's still annoyed that if the claim goes 50% then he'll only recieve half of what he would have, and his insurance premiums will go up next year on his private car (am I correct in assuming that?) and ultimately he wasn't the one at fault.

The crash happened on a bend on a 60mph A road. He was driving for a big national courier firm at the time, so I'm assuming they have a very good insurance policy, and so far I've asked him to get his bosses to confirm if there is any kind of legal cover built into the firms insurance to cover legal costs etc.

The accident happened 3 months ago now, so I'm assuming there'll be no marks on the road anymore.
He damaged his back, neck and shoulder and still can't hold a pen properly due to arm damage, however he is back at work and ultimately he's alive..so it could have been far worse.

Thanks again for your replies and thoughts, keep them coming. Carl

chanz4

drives as a courier, and keeps to the limit.......

ruggedtoast

If you push your hand against a wall the wall to all intents and purposes pushes back against your hand with an equal force so your hand stops dead.

If you hit head on an identical car of identical weight traveling at identical speed then your car will stop dead. But that's not what happened here. In the OP's post the other driver was going at nearly twice the speed of his friends vehicle, the impact of which would have been absorbed into his car and vastly increasing the inertia for the driver. He is lucky to be alive.