Advise Please

soton2000

Hi,

Just looking for a little bit of advice please. Was overtaking a bus at a bus stop this morning and stupidly misjudged pulling in front of it and the rear end of my car very slightly scraped it. Was on a busy main road with no safe place to stop. From what I could see there was no damage to the bus and when I was able to stop, found that there is only a very tiny scrape on my car (that'll probably come out with Tcut) The bus driver did not appear to notice that anything had occurred - he was busy with passengers getting on the bus - but I am worried that I should have stopped and spoken to him. Should I contact the bus company and inform them? I won't be claiming on insurance for the minimal damage to my car and there didn't appear to be any damage to the bus.

Any advise would be welcome - have been worrying about this all morning!

Quentin

Yes you should have stopped.


He or a passenger may have taken your reg etc, so its down to you whether you do the correct thing (report the incident to a police station ASAP and advise your insurer) or risk getting more aggro by way of a police matter (not stopping/reporting) and your insurer finding out by way of a claim against you from the bus company

neilmcl

Quentin wrote: »

Yes you should have stopped.


He or a passenger may have taken your reg etc, so its down to you whether you do the correct thing (report the incident to a police station ASAP and advise your insurer) or risk getting more aggro by way of a police matter (not stopping/reporting) and your insurer finding out by way of a claim against you from the bus company

More than this, a lot of buses have dash cameras now so it will be pretty easy to see the OP's vehicle.

Teapot55

Agree that you need to report it to insurer & police.

Being only human, we all make mistakes, especially if in a hurry or in heavy traffic.

I think I always quickly check my nearside door mirror when moving to the left - but easy to be smart when it wasn't me. x

Teapot55

Might also to be wise to get your eyesight checked, especially if you haven't had an eye-test lately?

Obviously you might be 21, have 20:20 vision and have just misjudged the manouevre through inexperience. On the other hand, the eyesight of older people can change from year to year.

Franz_Ferdinand

dannyrst wrote: »

If the bus driver didn't appear to notice and it was a minor scrape and you stopped out of sight of the bus to check damage to your car, you may decide not to say anything and if you hear anything about it, plead ignorance to noticing at the time that it had happened.

Whether you're happy to cause an accident and not report it, and whether ignorance would be a suitable defense for failure to stop, I'm not sure.

I think you need to read up on attempting to pervert the course of justice.

dannyrst

Franz_Ferdinand wrote: »

I think you need to read up on attempting to pervert the course of justice.

Let me guess. If you hit your car on a wall whilst parking, you call your insurers to report an accident too yeah?

neilmcl

dannyrst wrote: »

Let me guess. If you hit your car on a wall whilst parking, you call your insurers to report an accident too yeah?

That's completely different and you know it.

Franz_Ferdinand

dannyrst wrote: »

Let me guess. If you hit your car on a wall whilst parking, you call your insurers to report an accident too yeah?

Just read it before making yourself look stupid.

dannyrst

neilmcl wrote: »

That's completely different and you know it.

Well yeah, that's fraud, still a criminal offence...so I'd say they are fairly similar.

Franz_Ferdinand wrote: »

Just read it before making yourself look stupid.

Did I say it was legal? Did I say he should do it? As the OP was clearly deciding whether to report it or not, rather than add to the people saying to report it, I decided to try and point out what to consider before not reporting it, and gave him something to research.

Franz_Ferdinand

dannyrst wrote: »

Well yeah, that's fraud, still a criminal offence...so I'd say they are fairly similar.



Did I say it was legal? Did I say he should do it? As the OP was clearly deciding whether to report it or not, rather than add to the people saying to report it, I decided to try and point out what to consider before not reporting it, and gave him something to research.

Which you seem happy to commit yourself.