Non fault car insurance claim - Fire damage

90richardsm

Hi everyone,

I am hoping someone on here could give me some advice on a car insurance claim, involving some fire damage to my car.

This is a rather bizarre story. My car was parked up on the road next to my flat and I was away in work a couple of miles away. Whilst I was in work a car with its engine on fire pulled into my road and parked up next to my car. The fire spread through the car and the flames caused some damage to the front of my car, burning the licence plate making it unreadable (and therefore making the car not road legal). There was also damage to the front bumper and lights. The guy driving the car left his number so when I finished work I contacted him and he said that he saw an engine light and the next thing he knew the engine caught fire, he then said that insurance (Hastings) had informed him they would handle the repairs and would be in touch.

A couple of weeks passed and I heard nothing so I attempted to get in touch with Hastings. Over the next week or so I spent over 4 hours on hold attempting to talk to someone from Hastings team and getting nothing. 1 call lasting almost 2 hours before I gave up! I also attempted to email every single inbox I could find for Hastings, all of which were ignored even when I got auto response emails telling me they would be in touch in 3-5 days I got no contact.

I decided to get my insurance involved and they told me they would only get involved if I paid the excess on my insurance. As the policy is a continuation of my first policy as a driver the excess is £700, which obviously was not an amount of money I really wanted to part with. I tried desperately to get some contact from Hastings but nothing worked, eventually I saw no option but to take the hit get my car fixed and claim the money back from Hastings.

My insurance arranged my car to be taken away to be repaired and a few days later out of nowhere I got an email back from Hastings. The email claimed that they believed that their driver had not been negligent and that if I wanted to pursue the funds I would have to go through my insurance. Obviously I found the idea that they thought their driver had not been negligent to be a complete joke and emailed back to let them know I would be pursuing the funds.

Finally today I received another email from Hastings starting with the incredible line 'The cause of damage to your vehicle was the fire and our insured did not start the fire'. I almost couldn't believe my eyes, I know insurance companies are a nightmare but to claim their driver is not the cause of the fire is beyond a joke. There must have been some warning before the fire went up, a dashboard light (which the driver said there was), smoke anything!

Now I am really worried that they are going to get away with this because of the difficulty of proving the drivers negligence. I can't believe that I am being made liable to pay for damages to my car when it was legally parked next to my flat whilst I was miles away and someone parked a burning car close enough to my car to cause this damage. There are better places he could have parked nearby and he initially told me there was a warning light before the care went up, which in my eyes means he should have pulled up immediately. I am not going to let the case drop and I want to know if anyone has any advice on how I should proceed, my insurance at this stage have proved utterly useless and I don't know what to do.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

rs65

I'm afraid to say I think Hastings are right. You need to prove that their drivers negligence caused your damage. Just pulling over because an engine light was on isn't negligent. Parking a car on fire next to yours might be but you would have to prove it.

Aretnap

Negligence means failing to take the level of care which would be expected of a reasonably careful person.

Presumably you consider yourself to be a reasonably careful person, so honestly speaking if your car caught fire suddenly would you (a) keep driving a burning car while you looked for a safe space to stop well away from other vehicles or (b) pull up immediately wherever you can, get out and run like hell, never mind if it,s next to another car.

My answer would be (b) so I can rather see where Hastings are coming from in denying that their driver was negligent. If they,re right then I'm afraid it's just one of those things. No you did nothing wrong, but it's not obvious that the other driver did anything wrong either, and in that situation is just bad luck for all concerned - everyone either has to claim for their own damage or else claim against their own insurance policy.

(For more detailed information on how negligence relates to split second decisions taken in stressful situations Google 'agony of the moment')

You can launch a court claim for your excess of you like but will have to demonstrate negligence on the part of the other driver. If your policy come with legal expenses for then your insurer can appoint a solicitor to help you with the process but they will only do this if they judge that you have a better than 50/50 prospect of success.

alchemist.1

You can go down the route of failure to maintain the vehicle and if they dont budge then look at the small claims court.

Retrogamer

alchemist.1 wrote: »

You can go down the route of failure to maintain the vehicle and if they dont budge then look at the small claims court.

Where is the evidence the third party failed to maintain the vehicle?