car insurance renewal dilemma

princesszpuzzles

Hi there
Can anyone advise me please. My car was hit by a motorike last year and nearly a year later it has not been resolved. My car was written off and I was paid for it but nothing else has been sorted. My car insurance is now due for renewal. Is it best to stay with the current insurer until this is resolved or can I look for a cheaper insurer. Also if I do change what do I say in terms of claims and effects on my no claim bonus as I do not know if I will be found to be at fault or the other driver? He came down a bus lane (reserved for bicycles & buses at that particular time of day) and went into my passenger door at the back as I was turning left.

Thanks for your help

MarkyMarkD

In practice it will be easier to stay with your existing insurer; it will also give you more leverage in encouraging them to continue pursuing the third party.

If you change, you have to disclose an unresolved claim, and you will have to transfer your reduced amount of NCD. If the claim is ultimately resolved in your favour, your insurer (old or new) will recalculate your premium on the "corrected" basis. This bit will obviously happen automatically if you stay with the same insurer and be more complex if you don't.

We have been in your circumstance previously and we definitely thought it was easier to stay with the same insurer, which we did. Eventually, our insurer decided they couldn't be bothered to pursue the (uninsured, it turns out) third party but they refunded our excess and allowed our NCD. :beer:

Obviously if you'd changed insurer, and your old insurer decided they couldn't be bothered to pursue it, you'd be stuffed.

Regarding your accident, I would say it was (generally) 100% your fault if you turned left across a bus lane without checking that there were no vehicles in the lane. The fact that the other vehicle was driving in that lane illegally doesn't remove your liability to drive safely. But the relative speeds involved may mean that my judgement is unfair - in which case, sorry. It certainly isn't cut and dried that you will win.

Rules about under-taking don't really apply IMHO if the left-hand lane is reserved for a particular category of vehicles, or (indeed) if the right-hand lane traffic is queuing and moving slowly. But if the motorbike was driving at 50mph in a 30mph zone, it's less reasonable for you to be expected to have spotted it before you turned left across its path.