So you've never bumped or scratched your car in your ownership?

Accidents are precisely that, accidents. No one plans to hit another car and sometimes even the best of us make errors of judgement. The guy that hit Rich's car obviously made an error of judgement and hopefully won't do it again. Just because he's made a mistake once doesn't mean that he's a complete failure as a driver, should be permenantly removed from the road and publicly flagellated for this one mistake.

I went into the back of someone at a roundabout about 8 years ago. I was looking at the traffic going round the roundabout rather than in front of me and forgot that there was a car infront and made a very stupid mistake. I paid his costs directly rather than affect my insurance but if it had been more expensive i would have then put it through my insurance. I haven't made that mistake again.

It was a one off error of judgement, but the scenario is not much different to what Rich described at the start of this thread. I bet the driver i hit was pretty pissed off with me for damaging his car, but he was very reasonable about it and i put his car back into the condition it was before i damaged it.

 

I happy with folks making mistakes, I've had my fair share behind the wheel of a car, and as I said above I don't expect anyone to be the perfect driver.

Somethings however are more easily avoided. One of those being moving past (in this case) two stationary objects. I don't want the guy kicked off the roads as it's only a minor error, I just think he needs to learn his lesson and paying more for his insurance is part of that lesson. We all learn from our mistakes, and I hope this guy learns something from this incident.

 

Jamie, he pays either way. Either through his insurance in the long term or in a lump sum now straight from his pocket.

You crash your car into someone else, you pay one way or another.

 

This claim is going to cost him considerably more than

 

I hope it doesn't effect my insurance, I've got about 20 years no claims at the moment, and would like to think that it doesn't make me a higher risk.

The thing is, the fact that he continued trying to get through the gap, even after he realised that he hit my wing mirror, implies to me that if he had slipped through after hitting my car, he would probably have continued, and I'd have been none the wiser. And you wonder how many times he had done that before.. especially as I pointed out a dent in his bonet, and he said that he thinks that was there before..

I'll give him the befnifit of the doubt, but this might be the 10th time he's hit someone and not owned up to it.

I'm not saying that he should be slapped about, but an increaase in his insurance should be enough to either keep him off the road until he learns the value of other people's property, or make him think twice before attempting a trick Houdini would be proud of.

 

True.

I'm not sure if I'm comfortable with this business of people offering to settle outside the insurance channels. If the person who's been hit is happy with it then so be it, but to hear of people offering to keep the insurance firms out of it as they climb of the car just make me naturally suspicious. Do they even have insurance? I'm not saying that's what happened in this case I don't know the facts, but I've heard of this happening.

 

I've got my car booked in tomorrow, and the insurance company are providing me with an 'equivalent' courtesy car while mine's in getting fixed up. It's an Alpha Romeo Spider, which should be interesting, it's a nice looking car.

Hopefully mine will come back looking sharp.

 

i did that... pulled out infront of an orion... both cars totaled, police came, turns out to be my fault, asked the guy what the orion was worth "

 

Hi,

I got this back from the repairers last week, and although they've done a very good job on the paint-work, there was a big scratch on one of the rear lights, which I was sure wasn't there before.

They are fine about that, and said that they'd replace it, which is cool.

When I first took it in for an estimate I noticed that the bumper wasn't aligned correctly, they said that when they take the bumper off to fix it up, they'd try to align it properly, but when I picked it up it was still wrong, but they're saying that that can't fix that under the same clain, and insist that it must have been rear-ended at some point.

The 2nd issue is that while driving home from the garage, I had a few drops of water on my hand.. the hardtop seal was letting in water. This had definitely never happened before, but when I spoke to them, they said that they didn't think that they even took the hard-top off.

It could be difficult proving that this leak wasn't there before, but I'm 100% certain that it wasn't..

Any advice ?
Rich.

 

Taking the hardtop off is not the issue and frankly i'd be worried that they thought it was. It's the alignment of the windows which creates the seal. If they've resprayed the drivers door then they may have altered the alignment of the window.

As for the bumper, they are obligated to restore the car to the same condition as it was in before. Do you have any pictures of the bumper prior to the accident, and after the repray? If they're stating it's been rear ended and your pictures show the alignment to be correct then i'd go back.