What to do after a single vehicle accident

prowla

I think the police presence and 3rd party damage suggest that any attempted subterfuge may well unravel.

If the Council make a claim then he will have to provide insurance details.

CurlySue2017

rocco1504 said:

Yeah, that's the 1st thing I was terrified that he'd hurt himself, and as you say, he's extremely lucky. 
 He's not mentioned anything about the sign so I don't know if he damaged it or not. 

 I've always told my boys that the truth is the best way, it's just rotten that he's going to get penalised for this, but that's life i suppose. 

As someone else above has already said, he was very lucky indeed that it was only a sign that he hit.
You don't seem to have any concern at all that he could have seriously hurt (or worse) someone else.
Maybe him being penalised is what he needs to teach him to be more responsible in the future and not drive when tired. 

MyRealNameToo

rocco1504 said:

Yeah, that's what I thought would be the case, I just wanted some opinions. 
 Do you think his insurance will go up much again, it's a crying shame, as I say he's a really sensible driver, and his insurance has only recently gone down from the nearly £4000 he was paying last year. 
 He'd been working really hard in the days previous and just wanted to get home from seeing the girlfriend. 

He fell asleep at the wheel, that would generally point to someone who wasnt being sensible at the time as an objective outsider. Not saying he should lose their licence or anything, nor denying that people dont mess up some times but does raise a Q on if maybe there are some rose tinted glasses involved here. 

The impact on the policy will depend on if he tells them for information purposes only or a claim is made. For his own vehicle there will be recovery and storage costs in addition to whatever damage it sustained, plus costs of getting back assuming you dont sign it away. The claim for the sign could be a long time in the coming and so may not be practical to wait to see if they claim or not. 

Note there are no excess to be paid if only the council claim and in principle you could repay the council but replacement road signs used to be somewhat similar to the annual insurance price - though our policyholders were always good at taking them out on roundabouts that may be more complex to put replacement on. 

How much it will cost is difficult to say, you could do some dummy quotes online using similar but not identical details trying both a paid for fault claim and a notification only and see the difference. The fact they were paying £4k last year suggests there are some already high risk factors beyond his age and so the impact is likely to be more in absolute terms than many other peoples experience on here. 

Goudy

As already mentioned, it's one thing hitting your own gate post and thinking nothing more of it regards insurance, but he's hit some street furniture and the police didn't seem bothered because they know/checked he's insured.

As far as the police are concerned, they are happy (or unable to prove) he's not been careless/dangerous.
They would have checked his and the cars details and considered it all covered as no one else was involved or hurt.

If the sign is damaged, they'll just pass his details on to whoever owns the sign.

Whether he claims or not for his car, he must inform the insurance company.
There is another party involved, the owner of the sign and they could make a claim for the sign.

If the car has been towed it's probably in a state, so we aren't talking about a dent to a sign post, it's either flattened or mangled. They are going to expect it to be paid for.

If the car is truly old and worthless you might think it's not worth claiming, particularly if the excess on the policy is high.
So perhaps just inform the insurance of the incident "for information only", then quietly scrap the car later and replace it.
This way you have informed the insurance of an incident, but he's not actually claiming. That may or may not come later via the sign owner.

As for falling asleep behind the wheel, this is truly frightening.
Hopefully a healthy dose of insurance pain might teach him a lesson in driving tired.
If he's got a problem staying awake in the day, he might be suffering from sleep apnea and shouldn't be driving until he is treated. You are legally obligated to inform DVLA. 

XRS200

rocco1504 said:

Yeah, that's the 1st thing I was terrified that he'd hurt himself, and as you say, he's extremely lucky. 
 

He's extremely lucky he didn't kill someone 

rocco1504

Everything everyone has said is true and yes, telling the insurance is the way to go, which is what will happen. 
 It's just I had a couple of people tell me i should do "This" and sometimes these things seem feasible until you actually think about it. 

 It's his own insurance, and I've just spoken to him and he's actually been quite adult about it, and realises that telling the truth is the best way to go, even if there are penalties. 

We've just got to work out whether to actually make a claim or not and maybe just suck up the cost. 

 

rocco1504

XRS200 said:

rocco1504 said:

Yeah, that's the 1st thing I was terrified that he'd hurt himself, and as you say, he's extremely lucky. 
 

He's extremely lucky he didn't kill someone 

He was on a country road at 2am in the morning 

MyRealNameToo

rocco1504 said:

Everything everyone has said is true and yes, telling the insurance is the way to go, which is what will happen. 
 It's just I had a couple of people tell me i should do "This" and sometimes these things seem feasible until you actually think about it. 

The flaw was thinking it was a single party accident when actually someone else's property was damaged. 

On the plus side, road signs are much cheaper to replace than fuel pumps at a petrol station. Had a fair few of them taken out by policyholders too and some still reported it as a one party accident. 

You can sometimes get away with it when its just guard rails around lamp posts in car parks which were already battered and paint smeared from all the other people that "didnt see it". Would never advocate not telling though, most fraudulent cases I dealt with the customer ultimately openly told us about prior accidents which they'd failed to declare as part of the conversation. 

rocco1504

CurlySue2017 said:

rocco1504 said:

Yeah, that's the 1st thing I was terrified that he'd hurt himself, and as you say, he's extremely lucky. 
 He's not mentioned anything about the sign so I don't know if he damaged it or not. 

 I've always told my boys that the truth is the best way, it's just rotten that he's going to get penalised for this, but that's life i suppose. 

As someone else above has already said, he was very lucky indeed that it was only a sign that he hit.
You don't seem to have any concern at all that he could have seriously hurt (or worse) someone else.
Maybe him being penalised is what he needs to teach him to be more responsible in the future and not drive when tired. 

Of course I was worried about other people, it's the first thing I asked him when he called me seconds after it happened, but there's not a lot of point in writing half a page explaining blow by blow exactly what happened, when it's not relevant to the question. 
 

rocco1504

MyRealNameToo said:

rocco1504 said:

Yeah, that's what I thought would be the case, I just wanted some opinions. 
 Do you think his insurance will go up much again, it's a crying shame, as I say he's a really sensible driver, and his insurance has only recently gone down from the nearly £4000 he was paying last year. 
 He'd been working really hard in the days previous and just wanted to get home from seeing the girlfriend. 

He fell asleep at the wheel, that would generally point to someone who wasnt being sensible at the time as an objective outsider. Not saying he should lose their licence or anything, nor denying that people dont mess up some times but does raise a Q on if maybe there are some rose tinted glasses involved here. 

The impact on the policy will depend on if he tells them for information purposes only or a claim is made. For his own vehicle there will be recovery and storage costs in addition to whatever damage it sustained, plus costs of getting back assuming you dont sign it away. The claim for the sign could be a long time in the coming and so may not be practical to wait to see if they claim or not. 

Note there are no excess to be paid if only the council claim and in principle you could repay the council but replacement road signs used to be somewhat similar to the annual insurance price - though our policyholders were always good at taking them out on roundabouts that may be more complex to put replacement on. 

How much it will cost is difficult to say, you could do some dummy quotes online using similar but not identical details trying both a paid for fault claim and a notification only and see the difference. The fact they were paying £4k last year suggests there are some already high risk factors beyond his age and so the impact is likely to be more in absolute terms than many other peoples experience on here. 

The reason he was paying that £4000, I believe was that before he got his licence he had a motor scooter that got stolen from our driveway 18 months before and we declared it when he got the insurance, plus even though we live in a semi rural area we are in a high risk postcode.