Evidence for car insurance claim

Denno666

Hi,

Does anybody know if a garage report of damage to a car can be used as evidence in a car insurance claim? We've had conflicting information from the insurance company; one lady said yes, it can be and she'd send it to the other party's insurerers but when we rang for an update a different person said no, it couldn't be used.

The accident happened in the lead-up to a roundabout. There were 2 lanes and at the last minute, without indicating, the other car decided to switch into my lane but instead went into the side of my car. The impact pushed my car into the kerb and the other driver continued driving, pulling up further on.

It damaged the steering and suspension, crumpled the body work over the front driver's side wheel so the door couldn't be opened without catching, several smaller dents and scratches and on the passenger side the alloys were scratched from being pushed into the kerb. The car was written off, despite being in good condition beforehand (it had only just passed its MOT and still had many years driving left).

Unfortunately there was no dash cam footage and I had no passengers, although I've sent photos of the damage. Other cars who witnessed it just drove off. The other party is saying that I went into her car - if this had happened, her car would have gone into oncoming traffic. 

GrumpyDil

Technically I don't see why not.

I helped my sister in a case many years ago where she was involved in a car accident which ended up going to court under the small claims track. 

In that case the damage to my sister's car was completely inconsistent with the other driver's description of the incident, which we pointed out quite clearly in the witness statement. Interestingly the other driver's insurance company wanted to fold on the day of the hearing but the driver insisted on going ahead with the hearing and lost in no uncertain fashion, not helping himself by talking over the judge during the hearing.

Your problem will be if two different descriptions of events could explain the damage, in which case it would come down to a decision over who is more compelling and if the insurance companies feel there is any ambiguity around the identification of fault they may well end up settling 50/50 or similar. 

DullGreyGuy

Denno666 said:

Does anybody know if a garage report of damage to a car can be used as evidence in a car insurance claim? We've had conflicting information from the insurance company; one lady said yes, it can be and she'd send it to the other party's insurerers but when we rang for an update a different person said no, it couldn't be used.

The accident happened in the lead-up to a roundabout. There were 2 lanes and at the last minute, without indicating, the other car decided to switch into my lane but instead went into the side of my car. The impact pushed my car into the kerb and the other driver continued driving, pulling up further on.

It damaged the steering and suspension, crumpled the body work over the front driver's side wheel so the door couldn't be opened without catching, several smaller dents and scratches and on the passenger side the alloys were scratched from being pushed into the kerb. The car was written off, despite being in good condition beforehand (it had only just passed its MOT and still had many years driving left).

Unfortunately there was no dash cam footage and I had no passengers, although I've sent photos of the damage. Other cars who witnessed it just drove off. The other party is saying that I went into her car - if this had happened, her car would have gone into oncoming traffic. 

Engineer/garage reports or photos of where damage is certainly can be used as evidence however it often isn't very good at actually supporting one version of events over another but on occasions it is.