Driver for large company hits car and insurance takes forever.

AnnPM

Unfortunately my daughter was involved in a car accident on a roundabout with an employee of a large car manufacturer. Since then her life and mine has been turned upside down

The drivers side wing and front bumper had been damaged to the extent that her car unroadworthy. My daughter's insurance company dragged their heels as they wanted her to accept 50 /50 which she was adamant she would not do as the other driver was at fault as instead of getting in behind her in the left hand lane to exit the roundabout (as per Rules of the Highway Code) he tried to cut her off so hitting the car and pushing her down the slip road.

At the start of the process her insurance company told her to contact his insurance (what are they getting paid for) to see if he would accept liability, at the time his insurance had not even been informed of the accident and that has been the case since, the accident happened in mid July now mid September and his insurance still hasn't had a full statement from him

Have emailed the CEO of the car company to try and get things progressed but he has replied "Whilst we feel very sorry that you find yourself in this situation, ***** (UK) as manufacturer will unfortunately have no influence over the insurance companies." they do though, you would have thought, had influence over their employee to at least get him to talk with the insurance.

My daughter has taken out the legal cover but her insurance just say wait to hear from the other company as these things can take months.

Can anyone give me advice about how to at least get things moving?

InsideInsurance

claims with companies always take longer because rarely can the chap driving the car simply call the insurance company. Instead he often has to report via his manager, that eventually gets to their insurance admin person who will pass it to a broker who will pass it to the insurer. Most the time this is all done in paper form too.

Secondly, if its a large corporate setup then their insurance may be much more complicated and actually claims may not be dealt with by the insurer but by a claims management company (not the ambulance chasing types you hear people complaining about on here) who will often only inform the insurer at the end (or may never inform the insurer if the claim value is within their indemnity clause/ retention)

Legal expenses cover is to get back her out of pocket expenses like her excess. The establishment of liability on a comprehensive policy will be done irrespective of legal cover.

Quentin

AnnPM wrote: »

Can anyone give me advice about how to at least get things moving?

It all depends on what sort of cover she has.


If she has comprehensive cover she needs to put in a claim and her insurer should get the repairs underway (or write off the car) immediately.


As she has been told concluding the liability argument can take months and presumably she wants to get back on the road.


If she has no cover for damage to her own car then she needs to pursue the third party herself (or via a solicitor or her legal cover assuming that was in place prior to the incident)


Get a couple of quotes and send them to the third party telling them their insured was responsible, ask them to deal with the repairs and take it from their reply.

forgotmyname

Sorry to say but July to September is not taking forever.

My mum had a no fault accident that took 2 years to finalise. The other insurer queried everything. Took ages to reply to everything.

As a lorry driver all i had to do was fill in my accident report and then forget about it.
The only time i ever had to respond to another form was a driver in a £98,000 Mercedes who thought it would be clever to squeeze up the inside and claimed it was my fault.
But his version kept changing from me being on the right hand lane to being 2 or 3 feet over the line taking up both lanes.

It was supposed to goto court, But never did.

I have no idea on the outcome and who they assigned blame to the incident.

Marktheshark

Instructing them you intend to take a hire car to the going market rate of a hire car equivalent to the one damaged can speed things up.
You have to demonstrate that it is an average cost of such hire car.

The other option is make a third party claim directly against the driver via county court and instruct your insurance to butt out.

Quentin

Marktheshark wrote: »

The other option is make a third party claim directly against the driver via county court and instruct your insurance to butt out.

Get legal advice before embarking on this.


Bear in mind that if you do this, although the summons will be issued to the driver in person, if defended then it will be the driver's insurer that will be doing the defending.


And to get your court costs back you have to win - if you lose then as well as the court fees you also have to pay the other side's reasonable expenses for attending court.

AnnPM

Thank you all for your replies

It seems that she has to just be patient

She has comprehensive insurance the car is now fixed but at only 21, minimum wage and with only 1 years NCB cost implications of losing this if the insurance company get their way are eating her up.

Quentin

Assuming her legal cover started at the same time as her policy then she can pass over chasing her excess and other uninsured losses to them now to make a start on ( or at least open a file on her)

But you are correct to advise her to be patient - disputed liability then often takes many months to resolve