Help and advice please

jbatista

Hi all, some advice needed, my 18 year old son was involved in a 3 car accident today, an Oap breaked, the driver behind her hit her and my son hit him. Thank goodness that noone was injured.My son has !!! off worse, his car looks to be a write off. Directline who are his company have said that he is at fault:rolleyes:

Can anyone tell me what will happen now. The police were involved and breathalised everyone-all were negative tests.
I have never been through anything like this before so please advise.

Thanks
Jane

gazza975526570

Hi

if what you are saying your son went into the back of the 2nd vehicle then it is more than likely he will be held liable for that incident.

This is due to him not leaving adequate breaking distance.

What will happen will depend on the severity i guess - was anyone injured? what cover does your son have? If you have comp cover you will be able to claim for the repairs to your vehicle and the one your son went into

pboae

If he went into the back of the other car, then he will almost certainly be considered at fault, unless there was some extenuating circumstances.

If he is fully comp then his insurance should pay for his car and the car he hit to be repaired (plus any other costs that driver has, if it can be shown it was caused by your son and not by the initial accident). He may be able to get a courtesy car while the work is done, depending on his cover and/or the policy of the garage doing the work.

His insurers will probably want to decide which garage gets to do the work as well. He will probably have to pay an excess on the damage to his car as well.

If he only has 3rd party insurance it will be up to him to get his car repaired or scrapped at his own cost, and his insurance will pay for the other car to be repaired.

mattymoo

Your son is partly at fault. The way it should work is the middle driver is responsible for the driver at the front.
Your son is responsible for the rear end damage of the middle car. Not the front end damage though.

A lot will depend on what the first driver says about the accident. Did he feel one impact or two? The middle driver may lie and say your son hit him and pushed him into the front car. People do lie to preserve their NCD I'm afraid.

If your son has comprehensive insurance he will receive an offer for the market value of his car less the policy excess. There may be a young driver excess as well if he is under 25.

If he has only third party or TPFT then he has no one to turn to for meeting the reapir / write off costs.

Have the police given any indication whether or not they will prosecute anyone? If so, your son should be entitled to legal representation at court. Look for this wording in the policy - "Representation at any court of summary jurisdiction" - means the magistrates / crown court for offences arising out of motor accidents.

Finally, if he receives any letters from the other drivers or their insurers, pass these to his insurer for them to deal with.

jbatista

Hi my son has fully comp, green flag were there within 15 mins of me phoning directline and they took his car off to the repairers. Within 2 hours he was back on the road in a hire car, I have to say I cannot fault directline at all.
I did think it was along those lines because of the breaking distance.
The police are not taking any further inquiires into this matter at all.
Thanks for the advice, just hope that if the car is a write off he will get a good offer on his car.
Thanks all

mattymoo

Good stuff (well in the circumstances anyway).
Tell your son to start looking at ads in autotrader and online for cars of same age / type and similar mileage. He is bound to be disappointed with the first offer but with some ads to back him up, he may be able to pursuade them to up the offer.

Astaroth

But remember that ads are just that and cars do go less than what people advertise them for

jbatista

Well we are almost 2 weeks down the line, and still nothing has been sorted with Directline-it seems that my son is at fault hitting the car infront and the car infront of him is at fault by hitting the OAP.
His loan car hire ends this Fri,all directline say is that his car is a write off and he should be hearing from an assessor/engineer soon about an offer.
DirectLine will only loan him a car for 14 days-Is there anyway that I can push them to offer him the car longer until it is all sorted??

jbatista

jbatista wrote:

Well we are almost 2 weeks down the line, and still nothing has been sorted with Directline-it seems that my son is at fault hitting the car infront and the car infront of him is at fault by hitting the OAP.
His loan car hire ends this Fri,all directline say is that his car is a write off and he should be hearing from an assessor/engineer soon about an offer.
DirectLine will only loan him a car for 14 days-Is there anyway that I can push them to offer him the car longer until it is all sorted??

Anyone help please???:mad:

Astaroth

You will have the "guaranteed hire car" if I remember DLs naming correctly which is for a fixed 14 days - saying that if you had the classic courtesy car option instead then you wouldnt have got a car at all as yours is a total loss.

The only way you can force their hand is to argue that they have made errors/ unnecessary delays and therefore should be extending on a gesture of goodwill. Whilst DL are normally one of the quicker insurers the industry guideline has always been nearer 28 days for total loss rather than 14.