Had an accident

sukh38

Hi All,

I was involved in a small accident earlier today. The lady went in the back of me but she didn’t accept fault. I have just spoken to her and she is saying I should have not slowed down on the roundabout.

I am 99.9% sure it will be deemed her fault.

But let`s say it comes back and I am to blame (As a colleague had a similar issue). If after the claim being deemed my fault and I don’t pursue it through the insurance company after their investigation will I have to pay excess? Will my preminum go up ?

Please note there is no damage to the ladies vehicle.

Please advise

sinizterguy

Legally you are obliged to report it to your insurance company. Your premium will go up as a result.

You can try to claim directly from the third party's insurance company. Or you could let your insurance company deal with it.

If your insurance deals with it, you have to pay excess (reclaim it later from third party insurance company) and you will lose your no claims, unless protected.

sukh38

please note i have had some damage to mine

TadleyBaggie

The person who hit you is an idiot, of course it is her fault. You areperfectly entitled to slow down at any time. It up to following drivers to be aware of what is happening in front of them.

Tilt

sukh38 wrote: »

Hi All,

I was involved in a small accident earlier today. The lady went in the back of me but she didn’t accept fault. I have just spoken to her and she is saying I should have not slowed down on the roundabout.

I am 99.9% sure it will be deemed her fault.

But let`s say it comes back and I am to blame (As a colleague had a similar issue). If after the claim being deemed my fault and I don’t pursue it through the insurance company after their investigation will I have to pay excess? Will my preminum go up ?

Please note there is no damage to the ladies vehicle.

Please advise

And you technically should be right. There is very little plausible argument available (if any at all) to defend rear-ending another vehicle. You should also remember that every insurance company tells it's policy holder not to admit liability. HOWEVER, insurers are investigating more and more "smash for cash" claims where drivers are deliberately trying to get rear-ended. This is why more and more people are installing dash cams.

I would suggest that the lady in your case was following too closely and the fact that she is claiming that you "should have not slowed down on the roundabout" clearly suggests this.

Just simply give your insurers the facts about the incident and let them deal with it but make sure you tell them that as far as you are concerned, liability lies with the third party.

Alias_Omega

Contact the other "Party" insurance.

If you do not know the details, pull the information from "AskMid.com" for a small fee.

They will then ask the customer for details of the claim etc.

If you have any issues, i would then pass it onto your own car insurance. The other persons company should take away the car, give you a like-for-like car.

Once, they tried to give us a Focus when we have a Mondeo. Not Like-for-Like, a Focus is smaller. Instead we had an S-Max for 3 weeks...

bod1467

Did you exchange contact and insurance details at the scene? (As you're legally obliged to do, so I recall. At least contact details, and insurance details as soon as reasonably possible thereafter).

Quentin

sukh38 wrote: »

If after the claim being deemed my fault and I don’t pursue it through the insurance company after their investigation will I have to pay excess? Will my preminum go up ?

To answer your questions, if you don't make a claim then you have no excess to pay.


Your premium may still be affected as you will have this incident on your record and need to disclose it when getting quotes in the future.

Foxy-Stoat_3

Buy a pay and go sim card for 50p now, give the insurers the number and throw away the sim once your car is repaired and any injury claimed for....or you WILL receive texts and phone calls about this for the next 6 years.

Good lucks

InsideInsurance

Excess is only payable towards your own vehicle damages. So if you dont claim off your policy there is no excess to pay even if the TP were to claim off of yours.

If for some reason it did go 50/50 then you could still claim off of their insurance for the 50% without claiming off of yours first.

Your premiums may be impacted by the incident irrespective of if you claim or not and if it goes 50/50 or non-fault. Different insurers take different views on these things and often you have to look at the other rating factors to decide if its going to be a material impact or not.

As to liability, the story that you give makes her 100% liable. There are a few rare cases of "unreasonable breaking" but they are obscure, typically old and almost never used. Crash for Cash is another issue but with such minimal damage and no PI claim then that wouldnt add up either. The biggest risk and where most problems happen is simply where version of events dont match and without witnesses to say which of the two versions of events is the truth then liability is split due to insurers not wanting to gamble in court.

Car_54

InsideInsurance wrote: »

As to liability, the story that you give makes her 100% liable. There are a few rare cases of "unreasonable breaking" but they are obscure, typically old and almost never used. Crash for Cash is another issue but with such minimal damage and no PI claim then that wouldnt add up either. The biggest risk and where most problems happen is simply where version of events dont match and without witnesses to say which of the two versions of events is the truth then liability is split due to insurers not wanting to gamble in court.

It's a bit premature to say there's no PI claim - the accident was only this morning. The OP may wake up tomorrow with a [STRIKE]whiplash claim[/STRIKE] sore neck.