Hi all. I rear ended another car last night. My mechanic suggests I should claim as the insurance company will probably write off my 13 year old car. The other car didn't actually receive much damage and the owner at the time hoped we could avoid the claims process. So my question (almost certainly, a stupid one). Can one party opt to not inform the insurance company when the other party has?
Arthur
Given that you rear-ended someone else so your insurance will be paying out, I can't understand why the other party wouldn't want to involve insurance.
Generally, the reason people don't want to involve their insurance company is because the loss of no-claims will end up costing them more than just paying for the damage.
You can (assuming you are fully comp) make a claim for your loss against your insurer. If the other party choses not to make a claim against you then that is their choice.
Tim.
The other party was not insured?
When I was a young man and had to involve myself in such things, it was stated frequently that your bonus was for no *claims* rather than no *blame* so you'd lose that bonus whatever the circumstances. Is this no longer the case?
Tiddy Ogg.
When I was a young man and worked in insurance claims, our insured driver would usually keep his NCD if we recovered costs from the third party. Where it was settled under a knock-for-knock agreement then our insured driver would keep his NCD if the circumstances clearly indicated we could otherwise have recovered our costs. However, I was a young man 35+ years ago when the world was full of honour and fair dealing.
Toom
I don't think it's a question of people deliberately being less honourable or fair it's just a question of people being too stupid and uneducated to understand any concepts nowadays.
Rather that make a claim on _your_ insurance for someone else's fault, is it possible to sue them through the small-claims court? Presumably the "guilty" party would then recover his repair costs and your damages via his own insurance.
Pete
Yes, but you wouldn't need to sue. You just approach the "guilty" party directly and ask to be reimbursed. That party then claims on their insurance. Naturally this "asking" should be backed up with the "threat" of court action if necessary.
The alternative (which may be simpler for the victim) would be to use the victim's insurance's claims team to handle this approach on his behalf. But it would be costlier because the victim would suffer a loss of no-claims discount, and so a suitable figure would need to be added to the claim to compensate for that.
This compensation could be seriously hefty if the victim was just about to upgrade from a clapped-out Golf to a new Ferrari.
No, if it ever was. I had by NCD returned once the insurers were happy it was not my fault. This on third party only insurance.
Daytona
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