Accident in borrowed vehicle

Parking_Trouble

Just checking how this works on behalf of wife's workmate.

Her car was off the road but insured fully comp with LV=
Policy says she is covered 3rd party to drive other vehicles.
She borrowed a friends car with their permission.

She had an accident today.
Other driver admitted she was at fault.
There is a witness. Police were present.

She phoned LV= who explained its 3rd party only and weren't going to help with the claim.

I spoke to her and suggested she call the other drivers insurer (DLine) and ask them to deal with the claim and drop into the conversation she is considering using a Claims Management company.

Is that the right advice and best way to get the claim moving?

Slight risk of the other driver backtracking I guess but I've seen the pictures that make it look like the other driver was going the wrong way around the mini roundabout!

forgotmyname

Yeah she needs to do the chasing unless one of the claims company think she has a good case and worth taking on.

If the other driver denies liability or says she was partially to blame though, it could take a while for it to get sorted.

Is the car still driveable?

Retrogamer

I would call the liable person's insurance and suggest several accident management companies have been phoning you and if they won't help you'll need to go via that route.

Parking_Trouble

Just been on the phone to her after she had phoned DL. The other driver has now denied liability.

Bit crazy IMO because the other driver has no witnesses and my wifes friend has two independent witnesses and the photo's look damning.
I will post them up, obscuring any VRN's.

I told her to now pester LV= because they should now expect a claim against her.

Car is not driveable apparently.

Grey car is wife's workmates, trying to drive straight on.

Retrogamer

It'll be interesting to know how she'll be claiming she's not liable from those photos.

Parking_Trouble

Retrogamer wrote: »

It'll be interesting to know how she'll be claiming she's not liable from those photos.

Exactly. That will take a lot of explaining. My immediate reaction before I spoke to her was that the the white car was going the wrong way around the roundabout.

She said the witnesses (think they are in the grey Citroen) thought the white car was going to hit them.

LV= are now awaiting a call from DL.

They told her to consider using a claims management company.

Anyone know any good ones? They always seem to get bad press.

Marktheshark

Ask your insurance for a recommendation for a claims company, they usually have at least one on referral.

Crazy_Jamie

I am really struggling to see any basis on which the third party is denying liability based on those photographs. The cars haven't moved from their point of collision and movement would have been relatively minor because they're still touching, which means that the other vehicle must have been pointing more or less in that direction at the point of impact. My instinct is the same as yours; it looks like they've been driving the wrong way round a roundabout, or perhaps tried to cut across it or similar?

Anyway, if the other party is denying liability do you know whether or not they are intending to bring a claim for their vehicle damage? The reason why I ask that is because if the other side are bringing a claim, your wife's insurer would then get involved to defend that claim, and in that situation you could probably convince them to counterclaim for the repair costs.

The situation becomes a little more tricky if the other side are denying liability but are not intending to bring a claim for the vehicle damage. The issue is that unless there has been any injury this is almost certainly a small claim, and it is not therefore a claim that either a solicitors firm or claims management company would take on a 'no win no fee' basis. It is a situation where such a company may try to convince your wife to take a hire vehicle and ramp up costs that way, though given that it is not her vehicle even that may be unlikely, and I expect you've been active long enough on this site not to be caught by that anyway.

Unless someone else is aware of claims management companies who deal with small claims (and if so, I would be interested to know on what basis), it may be that your wife has to start a claim herself.

Marktheshark

They will probably claim, they were signalling to turn right and took avoiding action against a car approaching too fast ignoring the car already on the roundabout.
If you were going straight on and they were indicating right, it will take some explaining as to why you were on the roundabout at all.

somethingcorporate

Marktheshark wrote: »

They will probably claim, they were signalling to turn right and took avoiding action against a car approaching too fast ignoring the car already on the roundabout.
If you were going straight on and they were indicating right, it will take some explaining as to why you were on the roundabout at all.

Look at the direction of the white car - the photo just doesn't support that - unless the avoiding action was to turn towards the direction of the on-coming car!

I cannot conceive what the white car was doing - they appear to be pointing in the wrong direction to be cutting across unless they went from this nearside lane looking to take the right exit but jeez - who would do that? Looking at the tyre marks on the white circle makes it look like people cut it frequently but that is taking the biscuit!

Crazy_Jamie

Marktheshark wrote: »

They will probably claim, they were signalling to turn right and took avoiding action against a car approaching too fast ignoring the car already on the roundabout.
If you were going straight on and they were indicating right, it will take some explaining as to why you were on the roundabout at all.

I appreciate the attempt at playing devil's advocate, which in and of itself is usually a useful exercise, but I agree with somethingcorporate that the picture doesn't support that version of events. Turning into the path of a vehicle sooner than you otherwise would have would be a very strange definition of 'taking avoiding action'.

somethingcorporate wrote:

I cannot conceive what the white car was doing - they appear to be pointing in the wrong direction to be cutting across unless they went from this nearside lane looking to take the right exit but jeez - who would do that?

The only reasonable explanation I can come up with is that they were cutting the roundabout when attempting to turn right, which I agree would be a ridiculous thing to do when other vehicles were present.