What Goes Around Comes Around - I Hope!

I should have been in court on Friday, I can't say I was looking forward to it but I would have got a lot of satisfaction from seeing that man squirm. The man in question is the idiot who pulled out from being parked at the side of a main road without looking in his rear view mirror, he drove into the side of my car as I was driving along. Accidents happen sometimes, we all make mistakes, but this chap was an accident waiting to happen, he was on his phone and not paying attention to what he was doing.


When he hit me we both pulled in and he couldn't stop apologising, he seemed really angry with himself and generally lacking in composure. I was quite shaken up but it was me who had to stay calm and reassure him. I  gave him my details and got him to write his information down in his own handwriting, in fact he wrote it on the back of a piece of paper listing the calls he had made that day. My car came off worse because his car was bigger and higher than my Galaxy I had a dent and a deep scrape along the side of the car from the back panel stretching all along the rear door.  He told me that he would ring me the following day to confirm that he had reported it to his insurance company.


The following day I rang my insurance company and made arrangements for my car to be inspected and collected for repair, and also for a hire car to be delivered. I was entitled to a similar car to my Galaxy but as I didn't need a large car in the next few weeks I asked for a Micra or something similar (I got a Nissan Note and instantly fell in love with it). The man did not ring me the next day, but he did ring the following afternoon, there was something odd about his tone and he seemed surprised that I had already reported it to my insurance company. 


My car was inspected, photographed and collected, it was away for repair for well over a week because they had to order parts and then it had to be resprayed. The car came back and I heard nothing more until mid January when my insurance company notified me that his insurance company had not received any notification or claim from the other driver. I tried to call him but he didn't answer my calls or respond to messages. It became clear that he had got the damage to his vehicle repaired without informing his insurance company, maybe it only needed a new bumper.


At first he tried to deny the accident completely, but thankfully I still had the details in his handwriting written on his call sheet. Then he tried to claim that it was my fault but I could disprove that because there was no reason to pull across him and I could prove my arrival at work by CCTV image and fingerprint entry. To get to that destination I needed to be in the outer lane. He clung to it being my fault until we issued court papers, then he drew it out as long as possible  before admitting liability but disputing costs. There was nothing to dispute, I asked for a smaller hire car and I used the repair company recommended by my insurance company, my only other claim was for my excess and a nominal sum for phone calls. He managed to delay and procrastinate but finally a date was set for the court hearing, as everyone predicted he waited until less than a week before the hearing and then decided to settle. 


There really should be a penalty for people who do that this sort of thing, it wastes court time as well as messing people around. It has taken fifteen months to bring this to a satisfactory conclusion, he thought that he could make it go away if he ignored it but he didn't bargain for me having the tenacity of a Jack Russell Terrier, I never give up!