Hi Chaps,

I just reversed into someone in the van, really stupid thing to do – it was a very small car and it wasn’t visible in the mirrors – and wasn’t there when I got into the van.

Was a small bump, but I’ve got a sodding tow-bar, so bumper, radiator etc – in excess of £600 according to the repair centre.

About 3 years ago I had a minor bump with someone at a set of traffic lights, I admitted fault and premiums went up.

I know my premiums are going to be ridiculous now, has anyone had a similar experience? Any suggestions? Is it worth buying a really cheap car, and coming off the decent van insurance so that the missus only drives it?

So annoyed at myself, I do a lot of miles and have only had these two small incidents and they’ve both been completely stupid.

Any advice appreciated

Cheers

Ricks

Protected no claims?

My other half has had 6 accidents. Weirdly he has never been at fault but they have all been exactly the same thing – people driving into the back of him. Me included. 😳 That did not go down well.

I admitted fault

Don’t do that again.

Are you sure they didnt drive into your towbar ?

Protected no claims, yes. My missus is the first driver as she does the most amount of miles in the van – so it’s her no claims.

I admitted fault as it was pretty obvious, and the lady is the mother of my neighbour – plus I’m a pretty genuine person.

I offered to pay outright, without involving insurance companies – which she was totally fine with, but the quote is over £600 and to be honest that’s a lot of cash to pay out for me at the moment; plus the car is not drivable so she’ll need a hire car – so it’s not going to be cheap to settle outside of insurance.

Gutted.

Could you not stump up the cash?? It’s a lot of money but will be probably saved after your premium goes up!

Emma do you know my mate ?

Every car he has ever owned inc some pretty nice cars – fto and a couple of lotus elise has been written off by non fault incidents

Had a vodka bottle come through his sun roof when it was parked up
Was hit head on by a drunk driver on the wrong side of the road – after my mate had stoped wondering what was going on ,was driven into the back of more times than i care to remember by folk not paying attention at roundabouts nd junctuons

It was the lotus that was hit head on and looked like no one should have walked away but somehow thankfuly he was ok – car was unrecognisable !

I admitted fault as it was pretty obvious, and the lady is the mother of my neighbour – plus I’m a pretty genuine person.

Thats got nothing to do with it, when you insure you enter into a contract with the insurer whereby you basically give them the right to negotiate the outcome on your behalf. If you admit fault you are in breach of contract and technically have nullified the insurance cover. Its probably an irrelevance here, but thats why you should never admit liability. In fact by doing so you might well be undermining the propsects of the other party receiving any sort of settlement, so its neither big nor clever.

That apart much sympathy, I’ve had to stump up a few times for the same reason, (my kids on my insurance). Kind of defeats the object of being insured in my mind. In fact in a couple of companies that I have run we changed to carrying the lowest possible level of cover we could find, and instead put what we would have paid in premiums into a contingency fund instead. Short of mahoosive claims they now pay all claims out of contingency. Too date its been cheaper by a fair bit.

Protected no claims?

A friend of mine tried to move to a different (cheaper) insurer and the protected no claims wasn’t worth the paper it was written on. If you stay with the same insurance company then maybe, but the fact he had had incidents was all the other insurer was interested in regardless of what protected no claims discount he had with the old insurer. Food for thought.

was driven into the back of more times than i care to remember by folk not paying attention at roundabouts nd junctions

Not wishing to start an argument, but my first thought was that if lots of people kept running into the back of him, maybe his driving was partly to blame. It’s very easy in cars like an Elise to leave the braking until much later than the person behind might be expecting.

So annoyed at myself, I do a lot of miles and have only had these two small incidents and they’ve both been completely stupid.

Any advice appreciated

Pay more attention.

And probably better/cheaper to sub up the cash for the latest – anything under a grand is not worth a claim.

Some insurers only look at 3 years of claims history rather than 5 – certainly Bell/Elephant/Admiral do.

I had a silly car park incident (new car, misjudged size of the front, took off another car’s bumper!) followed by one on the motorway where everything suddenly slowed on a sliplane that I’d just merged on to, I couldn’t stop quite as quickly as the guy in front and lightly hit the back of him.

Premiums did go up, but not quite as much as I feared. With a bill of several hundred (and the rest), I’d be inclined to just put it through insurance – it’s what it’s for. Even if you’re paying a couple of hundred more next year and after it will still work out better IMO.

Looking at quotes online it appears that my premiums will increase by about £150 for the year, so it looks like the best option is to play it by the book and go through the insurance company.

Pay more attention.

Cheers for that nugget of advice. The only way I would have actually seen the car behind me in this instance is if I had got back out of the van and walked around to the back.

Nothing to do with stopping distances or braking more than he doesnt drive like a hooligan and folk expect cause he has a fast car he will squeese into gaps when queing toget onto round abouts Most crashes have been at less than 5 mph with him stationary but due to clamshell design of elise hes not a cheap fix

Aberdeen drivers are some of the worst ive ever seen for not paying attention – given we have a large number of roundabouts …….

Re: getting an old cheap car to insure.

Get plenty of quotes for this.. you’d be surprised by the outcome.

1. 1996 Seat Cordoba, 1.9TDi, 130k – value around £500 tbh. (the old car)

2. 2004 Audi TT, 1.8T – value around £6,500. (the new car)

Everything the same (mileage, commuting, etc) – including informing the new insurance company of a recent accident…

Seat insurance : £750 per year.
Audi insurance : £800 per year.

27, 6-years NCB, 10-years license held.

2 car-park bumps here…

(the following waffle is based on my experience)

yes, your insurance will go up lots: don’t be surprised by quotes of £700 or more.

changing your car/van won’t help much – you’re seen as the liability, not your car.

your insurance will be hundreds higher per year, for about 5 years.

a one-off payment of £600? – may well be the cheaper option i’m afraid…

When I say £600 – that was the accident repairs company saying “It will be over £600 to repair”, plus there will be the cost for her to have a hire car while it’s being fixed.

2 accidents in 4 years here, I get hammered by insurance companies and so will you.

The car makes little or no difference to the cost and neither does the reason for the accident.

You choices are:
1. Get hammered by the insurance company
2. Get rid of the car.

I can’t do 2 so have to do 1.

You choices are:
1. Get hammered by the insurance company
2. Get rid of the car.

Looks like those are my options then, I’ll have to re-evaluate at the time of renewal what I want to do. Hopefully I’ll be consulting then and the additional premium will just be added to the company running costs.

Such a rubbish day.

Trailrat he has never owned any decent cars so it hasn’t really bothered him that 3 were written off 🙂

Rickon,
try finding a cheaper repair place that can do it quickly and in cash. Whilst technically you do need to declare this “loss” for future insurance quotes there will not be any record that you had a loss, so your premium could fail to increaase.

My daughter put a dent in the tailgate of another car, and I thought the £200 cash it cost her to pay a small back street repairer was quite cheap. The other car owner was quite reasonable about it, as he dropped his car off to get it repaired, went on holiday and I sorted the rest out with my daughter. See of you can do something similar, especially if you know the other person – they may accept that you hire a car on their behalf (don’t know how much it costs to hire a small car, but there’s an option.

“The car makes little or no difference to the cost and neither does the reason for the accident.”

That is nonsense.

2 claims in my first 2 years of driving both my fault – car and reason of accident definitely do make a difference.

My insurance is £2,000 plus (yes, you heard me £2k +++) for a L license 1.6 auto 2005 Toyota so most of you are paying peanuts by comparison.

Yes, I have driving license but from another part of the world and only good for a year.

You see problem here is that everyone loves claiming for insurance regardless and even lawyers are gear up to that so if your insurance premium shoots up that is no surprise really.

Stop whining let the insurance company bleed you dry.

Parking sensors fitted Rickon. My current car came with them and they are amazing. Re the Aberdeen mate -sorry no smoke without fire. At the very least he’s either irratic on the road or unsure/changes his mind about entering roundabouts. Owning ‘an Elise’ means **** all. I.e driven by all the gear types.

Has he thought about taking some form of advance tuition?

Judge jury and executioner lord of tbe whole world has spoken !

Frequency and luck don’t happen in driving. You’ve always got to assume the driver infront may be from ‘South west’ of China or a lady 😉

What was the car you hit for you not to see it, a tonka toy? Sounds lame excuse.

Munqe-chick, when you are driving a van its extremely easy to lose a whole car in the mirrors. If you are being tailgated the only clue sometimes is when you can see the shadow of the car behind. In a car park, cars and pedestrians can go behind you after you’ve got in the van, so the only option if you need to reverse, is dead slow, hazards if busy.

Regarding the rear ending thing, I don’t really get it. When I join a queue (especially if its an unexpected one or one on a fast road, I will start to slow up from a long way back, only using the brake pedal enough to show the brake lights. If there are none, or just one or two cars behind I stop about 20 metres from the back of the queue, keep the brakes on and in 1st gear so I am ready to get out of the way, and I will watch the mirror. I have had two occasions where I have watched a car approaching too fast, seen the front dip down and a puff of tyre smoke and then decided it was time to get moving. Buggering about with the handbrake and getting into gear would have almost certainly resulted in being rear ended.

Six months ago I watched a car in the next lane stop behind a queue of traffic, and she had to sit there completely helpless, and after a few moments she looked in the mirror and had no choice but to watch the car behind bundle straight into the back of her. She hadn’t left herself any escape route.

On the way to Snake Pass for a ride a few weeks ago I was at the petrol station and witnessed a car suddenly stop and flash another car out of the station ….and was promptly heavily rear ended by a van from behind.

One of my pet hates is people who let other drivers out of junctions, people cross roads etc when there are obviously traffic behind them. Idiots.

If you admit fault you are in breach of contract and technically have nullified the insurance cover. Its probably an irrelevance here, but thats why you should never admit liability.

They like to give you the impression it will nullify your insurance, but it’s not really true – there is a big difference between admitting fault and admitting liability.

Parking sensors fitted Rickon. My current car came with them and they are amazing.

The amount of cars I have seen with dings in the bumpers although they have them fitted is amazing – I assume people rely on them too much. I have had one close call since getting a car with them when I nearly reversed into my father in laws trailer in his drive – it wouldn’t have been close to being an accident if I didn’t have them because I would have been looking more.

Oh, and not that it helps anybody much, but I had 3 accidents in 4 years, and it didn’t actually make all that much difference to my premiums. I did have protected no claims though (and IME it does make a difference – my premiums would have gone up a lot more without it – as indeed they did when I had my car stolen when I was under 25, so not allowed to protect), and this was 10 years ago now. Just got my renewal through and the premium is less than my excess 😀

MF I’m appalling at parking. Really bad in reverse. So bad that once a bloke who’d just parked his BMW offered to park mine for me. 😆

I still look etc but they’ve been a good aid to me.

Protected no claims?

Just be aware that PNC is only valid if you stay with the same insurance company each year and it also only allows you 2 or 3 claims in a certain period.

I lost my PNC after writing off my car in a no fault accident last year (hit some debris on the motorway, couldn’t see it at all in the traffic, lights, bad weather etc) and I’d already claimed the previous year for another incident (I’d been run into in a car park, whoever did it buggered off and I thought it was only superficial damage anyway, a few weeks later the whole rear bumper had cracked through and fell off on the motorway! Bloody lucky there was no-one behind me!)

So the ins co used that to whack the premiums right up, pretty much doubled. 🙁 And I don’t have PNC anymore…

Just be aware that PNC is only valid if you stay with the same insurance company each year

How can that possibly be true? When you get a new quote, they ask how many years NC you have, so you tell them the protected figure, as that’s what your paperwork says. They don’t ask how many years since you had a claim. I switched insurance companies a few years ago, and my current NCD is more than the number of years since I last claimed (given 3 claims in 4 years I would have lost the lot by that point without protection).

Protected No Claims is a scam. Honestjohn said it would be interesting if a driver challenged a subsequent increased premium if they had a protected no claims in place with that insurer. The Insurer would argue that they pose a greater risk but the NO CLAIMS discount therefore can’t be legally protected PPI springs to mind.

If PNC is a scam, how come my insurance didn’t go up anywhere near as much as if I’d lost all my NCD?

Companies ask about any accidents you’ve had – if you say none because you have protected your ncd your committing fraud…

Companies ask about any accidents you’ve had – if you say none because you have protected your ncd your committing fraud…