need help with car accident / insurance claim

[MoogieBoogie]

I was involved in a motor vehicle accident yesterday. Here's my side of the story:

I was driving northbound on a county road at about 35-40 mph (speed limit is 40 mph). This is a residential area. It is near a traffic light intersection. South of the traffic light, there were two north-bound lanes. This merged into one lane north of the traffic light, so the lane was fairly wide. A lady in a car pulled out of her driveway directly into my lane/path. She pulled out the vehicle so that it was blocking nearly the entire lane. I slammed on the brakes and honked, while attempted to maneuver to the left side of the lane. I collided with her vehicle on her drivers side rear corner. Even as I honked and was screeching towards her, she continued to pull into the lane.

The issue is that I only have liability insurance on this car (96 Civic with 285k miles). Any idea how to go about filing a claim? The police came and wrote a report, but they told me that they do not assign fault - that is up to the insurance companies. Any tips on how to approach her insurance? My insurance carrier told me that they do not get involved unless she files a claim against them.

I think that she feels the accident was my fault, since I rear-ended her. However, I feel that the accident was entirely her fault since she failed to yield right of way to oncoming traffic. Thankfully, nobody was hurt - we were both relatively calm after the accident. However, her son came out of the house and screamed how I hit her mother. I told him to calm down, but he continued his tirade and told me that he was going to "put me in the ground." I asked him how he could say such things in front of his parents and that he's only embarrassing his parents who appeared to be nice people.

Any tips/advice on how to go about handling this? The police report should be ready tomorrow.

Thanks,
-Brian.

[Acura NsX Pilot]

I would file a claim against her insurance and see where that goes and if all else fails sue her.

[steveny]

Sounds like her fault. Good luck getting anyone to pay and not spend more time/money than you will receive in payment.

[pbassjo]

Brian, fax me the entire police report and I'll try to help you.
Did you get her insurance information?(Ins. Co., policy# etc.) If so, send that too.

[MoogieBoogie]

Originally Posted by NSXrebel

sorry to steal your thread, but Saturday morning, someone backed into my car's front bumper. It was a utility pickup, and the box scraped the top of the bumper scratching the paint down to the plastic. Police came and no report was filed because my car was parked on the street and no one was injured. The bumper will be repainted obviously, the paint was deeply scratched down to the plastic, pretty deep gash/sratch. My question is, can this be easily be repaired, or will I have to replace the bumper? I did get the driver's insurance information, and have filed a claim with my insurance company ( USAA).

If you're sorry about it, then why do it? Why not start your own thread? All you would need to do is click a different button icon and type in a title - the rest is all the same. Your topic is completely different from what I'm posting about. If I was posting a thread about "let's talk about our driving mishaps over the holiday weekend" then I could see how it would be relevant. However, I'm looking for advice on how to pursue an insurance claim, as I have never been involved in a collision while being the driver of a vehicle.

Also, for your question, it would probably be best if you posted pictures so that Prime members could assess the damage better than from a few vague sentences.

Originally Posted by pbassjo

Brian, fax me the entire police report and I'll try to help you.
Did you get her insurance information?(Ins. Co., policy# etc.) If so, send that too.

Joe, the police officer told me that all the insurance info is in the police report. I'll email it over tonight after I get a copy. I really didn't want to bother you with this, even though you were the first person that came to mind when I was looking at the damage. I really appreciate your help!

-Brian.

[RSO 34]

Her insurance company will be listed by its code number on the police report. Just tell her company about her violation of the Vehicle and Traffic Law section 1143 (I am assuming this happened in NY):

§ 1143. Vehicle entering roadway

The driver of a vehicle about to enter or cross a roadway from any place other than another roadway shall yield the right of way to all vehicles approaching on the roadway to be entered or crossed.

[RPM217]

Even if the insurance company assigns 100% of the liability for the accident to the woman of the other car, depending on the amount of damage to your car, you could get screwed as that year car, with that much mileage is likely to be totaled by the insurance company rather than repair the damage. You might have to prove the value on the car is greater than what they want to pay you for it. Joe, I'm sure can help you on how to best handle the situation. GL

[White92]

I might be reading your statement of the accident wrong, but I think her insurance company will say it's your fault. If you rearend someone, it's your fault 99.9% of the time.

I'm on your side, although that means nothing to you. I worked in the insurance biz for several years. The way we looked at it in this kind of accident was if your hit her square in the rear end, you should have had time to slow down and avoid the accident. If you hit the corner like in this accident, it would be on her for pulling out in front of traffic.

[JonBoy]

I had the exact same thing happen to me (I was driving, someone pulled out and blocked the road, and I hit them). The police did not assign blame but her insurance company accepted blame AFTER interviewing me to see how our stories matched up. My insurance company said it was clearly not my fault and, in that case, they were right. Right of way belongs to the person already on the road and blocking your passage constitues a violation of your right of way.

They paid for my vehicle, my doctor's bills, and pain and suffering (a few thousand bucks - it wasn't a major accident, in the big scheme of things). It was going about 45 mph when I T-boned them and I spun 270* across four lanes of traffic, and totalled my car (and probably theirs - I drove the axle on the rear passenger side a good 12" out the other side).

You'll be fine.