Silvia Club of NSW

ive been hit by the liabilty bug and so has a friend of mine at work...

I t-boned a drink driver who was doing an illegal u-turn... it was clearly his fault and he admitted liabilty to the accident and reported it as his fault to GIO... He put the claim thru the next working day, pays the excess and gets a chq in the mail 4 days later for his written off car... Make a long story short, GIO stuffed me around for 15 days trying to prove liabilty (i only have third party)... In the end they accepted it. Waste my time though and my breath and i ended with GIO reporting me to the police for being threatning (the irony)...

i could of rung the cops that nite of the accident, but the situation here is if you ring the cops and there is proof of ANY blood alcohol in his system, then his insurance is void and therefor i have to take him out to court and collect money directly of him and that could take years if they decide to pay you 5bucks a week... This is the same if you hit an uninsured car or unregistered car...

A colleague of mine was reversed into by an L plater driving a ute... Now the father/instructor of the L plater happily accepts liabilty verbally as he knows that the excess is cheaper for him. My colleague gets all the details and rings him the next day to get his car fixed as he also has third party...

Now get this, the daughter who was driving the ute that day refuses to let the father speak to him and hangs up on him... I tell my collegue that most insurance companies dont cover L platers, as its risky enuf to cover P platers...

My colleague tries to put a police report in but is refused because the accident is classed as minor and the insurance deals with it... Police reports only are put thru when there is an injury or if either cars needs towing (remember this, as i was in the same predicament)...

They give him a 131 XXX number to ring the police assistance line and they too also refused to put thru an incident report... My colleague ask what do you do in these type of situations...

Now get this, he was told by the person on the phone to ring the police the moment you have an accident and say to the police that there 'might be someone injured' to get police on the scene so a police report can be put thru...

Its hard to prove liabilty wen someone reverses into you...

To put simply...get the cops on the scene or try to have a camera phone on you or even use your camera phone to record visually and verbally the accident and maybe a statement from the other driver... This will help in court if the insurance companies bails out on you or does not accept liabilty of their insurer...

Treat the other party as your enemy as they will bite your head off if your are nice to them in the first place... I have to admit, im with just cars and my excess is 1500 bucks... thats pretty hard to swallow knowing that your car is damged and that you have to fork that much out for excess to get your own car fixed...

Rant, rant, rant.. sorry.. its my 2-pence...

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dont worry mate i was in the same siutations too, except the cocksucker who hit my car, even though it was clearly hear fault, LIED to her insurance [nrma] and didnt even notify me of the situation - she had allreayd had started repairing the car like 2 days after the incident - with some little investigative skills i managed to find out the claim number and rang up the nrma.

i gave my side of events, provided PHOTOS of everything including damage, the streets where it took place, HER skid marks etc. and what ended up happening?

"sorry, but in this occasion, the accident could of happened either way, so we wont send you the bill to fix her car, but we wont fix your car either"

i was furious, and i wanted to take the matter to court. But being 17 at the time, with minimum wage income and no knowledge whatsoever of the proceedings in this kind of matter, i just bit the bullet and fixed my car myself.

-mark

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my cousin had his car reversed into at an intersection a few months back. The bloke went to turn, and decided not to...then realising how far into the intersection he was he reversed back hitting my cousins car...then realising that he had hit my cousins car he took off and left my cousin at the intersection with a pretty badly smashed front end and no details.

My cousin rang the cops and they came down, took his statement and luckily enough some passer-by's saw the whole thing and stuck around to talk to the cops. The copper said that without the other witnesses there was nothing my cousin could have done. So it's always a good idea to get other people involved if they are a witnesses as well as get the info off the other driver.

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Do Unto Others, Before They Do Unto You
- Hobzta

This is a late edition to this conversation, but this is the best bit of advise I've ever been given....

If Possible get a witness!!!! any one on the street another car - it doesn't matter, just get their name and number.

We were backed into in a bottle shop drive thru of all places. The guy accepts fault, yet a week later I have his insurance company calling me to sort out "my" accident. The lady in the bottle shop remembered me having a big whinge (custom paint and all) and hey presto his insurance company does a 180 and admits it was his fault!