Some accident advice Bike v stationary car!

nzpod

I hope this is the right place to post, apologies if not.

Just very quickly. Stationary car parked on a quiet residential road. Lady crashes a cycle into it. She was riding on the wrong side of the road.:mad::mad::mad:

I didn't see it but was outside heard the crashed looked over the fence and called out to her as she was cycling away.

She stopped. Admitted she crashed and apologised.

there is 3-4 panels worth of damage

Do I call my insurance? Will it affect my NCB? Or will I even have to pay an excess?

I have her email and phone and she just lives a couple of doors down from me. I don't know her at all though. So do I handle it myself?

Thanks a lot!!

forgotmyname

Unless you can claim from her then its probably going to be a fault claim and you will have your excess to pay and increased premiums for upto 5 years.

kwmlondon

Sorry, you may as well have had someone accidentally run into your car with a wheel-barrow or a runaway horse or something. It's hellish unlucky but that's the risk of having a car. How much damage did this woman suffer if she did all that damage to your car? Her bike must be totalled...

Aretnap

You can claim from your own insurance, but you will have to pay your excess (which is in theory recoverable from the cyclist) and your NCB will be affected unless the insurer manage to recover their own costs from the cyclist (their enthusiasm for trying to do this may be limited if they're not sure that they will recover it).

Or you could take the car to a local bodyshop and get a rough idea of the repair cost, and then speak to the woman. If it's a smallish amount of money she may be willing to settle with a handful of cash, if it's a larger amount she can pass it on to her home insurers (if she has any they will provide public liability cover - which generally included cycling accidents). Ultimately if she doesn't cooperate you can go down the route of the small claims court if you judge that the time and effort is preferable to going through your own insurance.

You should inform your own insurers of the incident even if you don't plan to make a claim through them, especially if there's a possibility of them finding out some other way (eg if she informs her own home insurers).

Norman_Castle

She is liable for the damage. Ask if she has insurance, her household insurance may cover this, if not she should cover your losses herself. Talk to her and suggest getting quotes for the damage to be repaired.
What exactly is the damage?.

neilmcl

Unless the women is willing to pay for a repair or has adequate insurance to cover it I fear you'll have no choice to either involve your insurer (and pay the excess) or pay for the damage yourself and take legal action against the cyclist. Do you have legal cover on your insurance?

nzpod

Hi all thanks for the very quick response

There is significant damager, IMHO.

She must have been cycling on the wrong side of the road as my car was parked facing forward and she hit the front driver's, if that makes sense.

Anyway there is damage to the front driver's bumper, front driver panel behind wheel arch, lots of scratches along front drivers door, chip off drivers front alloy and a small dent on bumper which is from her bracing her fall I think. I think it is going to be a lot maybe 1-2k for four panels. A very wild guess.

Her bike looks fine and I checked and she was not injured.

I have reported to the insurers for "information only" and they essentially said they can't chase her for it. I can either sort it myself or claim through them and pay the 200 quid excess. That will affect my NCB.

Either way I am leaving the country, back to NZ in Dec so won't need insurance here for at least another 3-4 years so NCB is not a huge issue but may affect my rates when I go home...

Reported to local police as well just to dot i and cross t's. They didn't care! :-P

Ill go get some quotes this afternoon and go around and have a chat with her and her hubby this evening??

How does that sound?

Thanks everyone!

nzpod

neilmcl wrote: »

Unless the women is willing to pay for a repair or has adequate insurance to cover it I fear you'll have no choice to either involve your insurer (and pay the excess) or pay for the damage yourself and take legal action against the cyclist. Do you have legal cover on your insurance?

I do have legal cover but they said that I can't use it if I am not using them to claim and also as there is no insurance company at the other end to claim back from so they were really uninterested.

InsideInsurance

nzpod wrote: »

I have reported to the insurers for "information only" and they essentially said they can't chase her for it.

They can chase her for it so they are really saying they cannot be bothered chasing her.

Back in my claims days we would make a token effort to recover losses in circumstances like this but generally it wasnt economical to pursue them through the courts as its a Small Track (aka small claims court) action and so legal fees are irrecoverable but an insurer will not go to court without a barrister so even if they win the payout may not even cover their legal fees let alone their outlay.

Occasionally on big cases, normally where multiple vehicles are involved, then you would commission a report on the third party's likelihood of being able to pay back the monies based on where they lived, what their neighbours said they did for work etc.

Keeping things outside of insurance will keep the price down and possibly increases the chances of her paying up

Johno100

And to think the more militant cycling advocates want a presumption in civil legal proceedings that the driver/keeper of a vehicle in a collision is the one who is liable. :mad:

arcon5

This is assuming she wouldn't deny it anyway. Most incidents like this see you paying the price