So apparently if there's a keep clear box and you're turning right out of a T junction, if a car decides to overtake the queue on the wrong side of the road at quite some speed it's still your fault when the inevitable happens and it takes the front off Colin the mighty C-Max,.
On the upside, you should have seen the mess he made of the Zaffira! Took the front wheel out, followed by ever single door and panel on that side so the doors wouldn't shut!
So the question is, assuming the insurance company offer scrap value plus half a sucked boiled sweet. Or just the boiled sweet if I keep him. Should I bother fixing it with panels from a scrapyard? He's already 14 years old, done 140,000 miles and was only ever the one above poverty spec 1.6 petrol.
On the other hand he had 4 goodyear tyres (almost new rear, 50% fronts), EBC greenstuff brakes (because why not), serviced way more regularly than needed and never let me down (apart from the occasional random flat battery). So I really don't want to be playing bangernomics with his replacement.
As long as he's still straight (fnarrfnarr) and the hit hasn't cracked any engine/other important mounts I don't see why you wouldn't bung a load of multicoloured scrapyard panels on him, and then carry on as you were.
I did always like those Harlequin VW's
As long as he’s still straight (fnarrfnarr)
Im more worried he might be a little racist, it was a black Zafira. Coming home with a busted eye is so out of character for him, he's such a gentle chap normally.
#blackMPVsmatter.
You’re always better with what you know ime.
You could spend a couple of k and get the best car in the world, or it could go bang in a big way after 3 weeks.
So apparently if there’s a keep clear box and you’re turning right out of a T junction, if a car decides to overtake the queue on the wrong side of the road at quite some speed it’s still your fault when the inevitable happens and it takes the front off Colin the mighty C-Max,.
Correct. Pulling out of a side street the main road has right of way. Whilst it was a dick move on the other driver's part, be glad it wasn't a bike.
If you were turning right how come your left headlight unit is ****ed? Was it more of a head-on?
Edit: hold on, was the other car coming from your left? I.e queue jumping the traffic in your (nearly) lane?
I puzzled over that as well, no the car came from the right. Having had a look inside the bumper its possibly worse than it looks. All that plastic is hollow so its gone into the other car and then the lights been ripped out from the grill side out.
The struts from the chassis to the bumper are a bit bent as well 😫
And the plastic trim pannel under the windscreen is also bent up, might just be the bonnet, or the whole chassis might have taken a knock.
Correct. Pulling out of a side street the main road has right of way. Whilst it was a dick move on the other driver’s part, be glad it wasn’t a bike.
Id have probably seen a bike because I looked, then looked back to the left as there's a traffic light about 20m up the road.
The car obviously came from a lot further back down the road than I was looking! Motorbike I might have missed doing the same thing mind you.
I'm missing something, if he was coming from the right wouldn't he have had right of way, how could he be queue jumping, can you post a link to Google maps of the junction?
Damage may not be as bad as you think, at least if wasn't head on and caused damage further into chasis where the crumple zones are.
I'm guessing there is a lane to rurn right at the lights further down and matey boy in the Zaffira was jumping the queue to get in that lane by driving down the outside.
OP were you stationary at the point of collision and having turned right on the correct side of the road?
I’m missing something, if he was coming from the right wouldn’t he have had right of way, how could he be queue jumping, can you post a link to Google maps of the junction?
There's only one lane, the car coming from the right was stopped in the keep clear box in front of where that black merc is. The car that hit me was coming down the middle / other side of the road.
[url= https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50014126567_6a4097ed1e_c.jp g" target="_blank">https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50014126567_6a4097ed1e_c.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/2jcztn2 ]2020-06-16_09-15-48[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/7614571@N05/ ]thisisnotaspoon[/url], on Flickr
I’m guessing there is a lane to rurn right at the lights further down and matey boy in the Zaffira was jumping the queue to get in that lane by driving down the outside.
Don't be so sexist, it was a late middle aged lady racer.
But otherwise correct.
In her words "I was going quite quickly to make it to the green light"
Its simple, spoony is turning right onto a main road, car is approaching from the right and is in the opposing lane as he is overtaking.
Seen a very near miss when a motorbike in front of me overtook a car slowing down to turn left. A car pulled out and the bike was hidden behind the car it was overtaking, and had to swerve into the far right gutter to avoid the oncoming car.
Hence highway code stating not to overtake at junctions (I cannot remember if its a must not, or should not) but I've heard the same, that the car joining the road would be at fault even though the overtaking vehicle is making a careless manoeuvre.
I wouldn't bother changing any body panels. Whack a new headlight unit in, use a small adjuster on the panels that are way out, and bobs yer uncle
Ah understand now, don't know the exact rights and wrongs but the idiot overtaking at speed is definitely at fault in my mind.
I wouldn’t bother changing any body panels. Whack a new headlight unit in, use a small adjuster on the panels that are way out, and bobs yer uncle
Kinda tempted to go with that TBH, I'm hardly car proud, just sentimentally attached!
Inside panels the structures a bit weird. There are two struts from the main chassis to the 'bumper', but over the top of the radiator, there's a fairly substantial plastic cross member that goes all the way across which has cracked where the grill attaches to it. The headlamps attach to that so I might have to see how easy it will be to re-attach them.
assuming the insurance company offer scrap value plus half a sucked boiled sweet. Or just the boiled sweet if I keep him
You might do better than that. Looking at the value of a 14 year old C-Max, it's about the same as my Focus was when I wrote it off. They said it was worth £1200, but I could buy it back for 23% of that (plus the excess). So they gave me the car and £700, I fixed it for £60, MoT'd it for £40 and then they were happy to re-insure it.
The hard bit will be getting the headlamps to align correctly.
After a mate of mine managed to crash his 18 yr old Ford Ranger into a wood chipper, we straightened the worst out with a club hammer and pry bars. For the headlamp I made a couple of brackets from Aluminium sheet, I double nutted the mounting bolts to allow headlamp alignment.
It passed the Mot and actually looked ok, although to be fair it has the general appearance of a pick up that should have a machine gun on the back, full of freedom fighters.
This was a few years ago and it's still in use as a work vehicle.
In her words “I was going quite quickly to make it to the green light”
So she admitted to inappropriate speed? Did you tell your insurers that?
Ah understand now, don’t know the exact rights and wrongs but the idiot overtaking at speed is definitely at fault in my mind.
Unfortunately what's in your mind is an irrelevance when by your own admission you don't actually know.
That's wide old road. The OP should have been looking for overtaking traffic - as I said before, car doing it is a dick but it's highly likely for a motorbike or cyclist to be filtering there. One would hope that they'd do so at a defensive speed (the "being right" vs "being dead" argument) but it can easily happen.
Lessons learned, be more cautious in looking out for people driving like bellends.
If they have right of way, sounds odd to blame them/call them bellend.
cynic-al
Subscriber
If they have right of way, sounds odd to blame them/call them bellend.
I would like to draw the honourable gentleman's attention to rule 167 of the Highway Code.
DO NOT overtake where you might come into conflict with other road users. For example approaching or at a road junction on either side of the road
If they have right of way, sounds odd to blame them/call them bellend.
Not really, overtaking across a junction in contravention of highway code guidance at a speed where a car exiting the side road has an obscured view is idiotic.
There's also the secondary issue of overtaking a queue out of impatience with presumably no safe place to pull in again if traffic was coming the other way.
That's two reasonable uses of "bellend" regardless of priority.
Ah ok gotcha ta
Are we absolutely sure that if the other car is on the wrong side of the road, then it’s the OPs fault? Seems a bit harsh. Filtering I can understand.
EDIT what if the turning car is established on the correct side of the road. Say if they are 30 yards away from the junction. Does that still apply?
So apparently if there’s a keep clear box and you’re turning right out of a T junction, if a car decides to overtake the queue on the wrong side of the road at quite some speed it’s still your fault when the inevitable happens and it takes the front off Colin the mighty C-Max,.
I witnessed a similar incident that didn’t result in a crash, but very nearly did. I reported the guys registration to the police and they ended up prosecuting him. It went to court, I was called as a witness. He ended up with points and a fine.
In my incident all the traffic was moving at roughly the speed limit, so the guy overtaking was clearly speeding. Maybe that was the difference here - not that he was prosecuted for speeding though. I forget the charge to be honest, but it wasn’t speeding.
EDIT what if the turning car is established on the correct side of the road. Say if they are 30 yards away from the junction. Does that still apply?
I did wonder that, if I'd been half a second less polite or accelerated quicker would it have been closer to head on and a far worse accident, but not my fault.
Insurance is fully comp anyway so it doesnt affect the outcome much appart from me being down an otherwise good car and my premiums being hoiked up by £120 (renewal is next week, b........).
Hyc "You MUST give way to traffic on the main road when emerging from a junction with broken white lines across the road." means all traffic inc overtaking vehicles
There’s only one lane, the car coming from the right was stopped in the keep clear box in front of where that black merc is
I'm still looking for the black Mercedes... 👀
So the OP pulled out into the path of someone established on the main road who happened to be overtaking at the time? At the very best, that sounds like 50/50 if they both did 'wrong' but it sounds like the OP's responsibility even though the other driver contributed by being impatient?
Never mind, it's just a car and noone hurt. Get it fixed or replaced and move on 👍
You are allowed to enter yellow hatched boxes to turn right traffic permitting. Keep clear are council advisory road decorations therefore if there was a real trafic issue it would have a hatched box.
If there was enough trafic for you to have to try and inch out then a driver overtaking is not driving with due care an attention therefore you should use your legal option on your insurance to argue this one.
I suspect your insuance is trying to minimise payments as a court case might prove more costly than just paying. I once turned left in to a parking space and stopped as a person was standing there (was obscured from me by vehicle to the left of the space) I stopped and 30 - 45 seconds later (still staionary) a nother car drove into me. My inurance said it was my fault as I was manouvering and paid out.
edit - I seem to remember reading that you can enter a keep clear as long as you keep moving, so in heavy trafic moving slowly would be a reasonable use of the space. If I remember what I read correctly.
It's possib;ly too late now if you have moved the car but you could try pressing the undo button
I’m still looking for the black Mercedes… 👀
It's a VW, I was looking at a thumbnail when I typed that.
Zafira
Obviusly a moot point, because, as the often do, it emerged out of no where doing something stupid, but I'm always on my guard when there's a Zafira on the road.
IMO Easily in the top ten of badly driven cars on the road. I'd say the worst by far if I was being honest, but you're never more than a few metres away from a Zafira owner and despite them being awful in every way (Ugly, Unreliable, unpleasant to drive, thirsty CATCH FIRE) they seem to like them.
The most puzzling Zafira owner is the one who does them up like a Boy Racer, they did make a sort of quick one (was only quick in a straight line and even then, it wasn't great at that) but it's never one of those, it's always a 1.6 Merit with 17" wheels and decals, so many decals.
Right, the insurance co declared it a write off, and I can buy it back for £88, which I'll probably do, flog the winter wheels, alloys, stereo etc then sell it to the scrappy for £88. I've had a look under the bonnet and it's more bent than it looks, it's probably fixable but probably also more of a PITA than I can be bothered with as I can just use the MG for short trips in the summer anyway and hopefully by winter I'll have a new job and just have to bite the bullet and get something on finance/a loan despite generally hating the concept of loans and finance.
They've also come up with a massively lowball offer of £730 (minus the excess and £88 makes it ~£550). I said no, there's only one on autotrader at £750, and that's been in a crash and not repaired!
They increased it incrementally, I've sent back a link to every C-max within 30 miles and under £2000 (filtering by year/mileage doesn't work as there's not that many of them) and pointed out that they're all £1600-£2000, and all have obvious issues just from the photographs/descriptions even without having to view them.
How persistent can you be? Can I threaten them with an ombudsman? How long does that take?
I'm currently without a (reliable) car and without a job so I'd rather have enough cash to have to potentially buy one in a hurry if needs be. I don't really want to get stuck in a rut between not being able to commute and not having the money to hand to buy something.
You can, and the Ombudsman might well find in your favour. However, it can easily take in excess of nine months to get a decision, which for the sale of a couple of hundred quid might not be worth waiting for.
Obviusly a moot point, because, as the often do, it emerged out of no where doing something stupid, but I’m always on my guard when there’s a Zafira on the road.
Yes. It was a Zafira that drove straight down the middle of the road and into the driver-side front of our T5. It then spun satisfyingly round and slammed into a high kerb writing the bastard thing off. The woman driving it was either texting or asleep. They should all be seized and crushed on sight.
The woman driving it was either texting or asleep. They should all be seized and crushed on sight.
Women? Seems a little harsh...
how far off the amount you want are they now? cars for sale on autotrader doesn't mean cars sold, there are loads on ebay that have gone for under £500..
i'd probably just put it up there in its current state once you buy it back, someone will give a couple of hundred pounds, which is less hassle than trying to break it yourself
how far off the amount you want are they now? cars for sale on autotrader doesn’t mean cars sold, there are loads on ebay that have gone for under £500..
I did think that, especially as autotrader is typically dealers.
But seeing as they've canceled my insurance I can't test drive anything privately so i'm stuck with paying dealers prices.
how far off the amount you want are they now?
Assuming I sold the car for ~£200 I'd be left with about £950, maybe I should just take a bangernomics punt on ebay.