Car repair cost and tracing driver

[stephenh]

I work within the claims enviroment within an insurance company and can offer some advice.

The best thing to do is get onto the council as they generally only keep the CCTV for 7 to 14 days, maybe longer, but this is dependant on the council. This is a priority and dont take no for an answer. Be prepared for the run around however but dont give up.

However, if they do not have the CCTV then you have no real course of action to take. Your insurers cant make a recovery from a third party of their insurers if they are unidentified.

However the MIB are an organisation who are funded by insurers for exactly this reason. However you would need to claim on your own insurance policy for the damage sustained to you car and claim your excess back from the MIB. There are some insurers who do waive the excess when hit by uninsured drivers, but not sure of their policy about unidentified drivers. Directline are just one of these insurers, but I dont work for them so I cannot comment.

However Boris 77, to add a spanner into the works, the collision took place on a roundabout which has implications with regards liability. If both cars are travelling in the same direction and there is lane encroacment from one party, or if someone is in the wrong lane for exiting and cuts another up for example, and there are no means of verification by means of witnesses, then liability will come down to one word against another, and insurers will more than often settle on a 50/50 basis which means you would only get 50% of the excess back.

As the "bint" drove off and no one got the registration, there is no right of recovery from anyone, so my advice would be to use your insurance, get the car sorted, pay your excess and put it down to one of the unfair and miserable experiences in life.

I am sorry that I do not have any better news for you, but having had 20 years experience in the industry, this is probably the best course of action for you.

Best of luck

Fraser

The Motor Insurers Bureau (MIB) surely only covers personal injury, not damage to vehicles or property?

[Blacknblue]

Personally I wouldn't say it's worthless, like all insurance it's a payment for some form of protection. Trouble is you never know how they calculate the premiums before your NCD. If your premium in the first place is calculated based upon the risk of you as a driver then any notified claims increase the risk to the insurance company, therefore your premium goes up. If you have protected NCD it will be reduced by that percentage, if you don't then you pay even more. But do they increase premiums more if you have protected NCD to recoup more of their losses?

If it's an even playing field then in theory protected NCD will save you money, if it's not, then who knows!!!

The only definate way to avoid additional hikes in premiums above the usual money grabbing rises everybody gets seems to be - don't make a claim. If you have to claim, maybe protected NCD will save you money but difficult to tell as your circumstances have already changed because of the claim anyway.

[blitz]

Daughter gets vastly increased renewal. She protests, they say it is because of the claim she made, which she insisted she hadn't. I get involved, I am told that she had made a claim when her car was damaged by the lady opposite our house backing into her unattended car.

Turns out that having been told on taking out the insurance that she must disclose any accidents however they happen, she had duly done so, stating that the lady concerned had owned up  and paid for the repair.

 This then is classed as a NO COST CLAIM and justified the premium increase. So damned if you are honest and damned if you are not.