While you may not be wholly liable, you should bear in mind the following from the Highway Code:

"Do not reverse from a side road into a main road." (201)

"If an accident occurred due to you reversing onto a main road from a minor road then there may be the possibility of you being prosecuted for driving without due care and attention." (from www.askthe.police.uk/content/Q390.htm)

Your brake/rear lights may well have been lit, but the car was sideways on to the other driver and your lights would not have looked bright. From the side, the brake/rear lights, depending on the design of the car, may also have appeared "inset" from the furthest protruding part of the car's rear.

It's not looking too good for you. Do you at least have an independent witness to establish that you were actually stationary at the time of collision?

Edited by FP on 24/12/2013 at 23:30

50 -50

dvd

thanks for your input peter but there was no car coming down the street when I started reversing and as soon as the lights on the other car were spotted at the end of the street by myself and rear passenger I stopped expecting the car to drive past me, my brakes were on, i was stopped and a couple of seconds later the car which was supposed to pass me, hit me. on my passenger side corner of the bumper. Insurance are telling me due to me being stationary I am not liable, worse case 50-50. It also appears that lies have been told regarding having no passengers in the car, possibly due to it being a mobility car.

So if your pulling out of a space forwards and see a car coming towards you and you stop to let it pass but your passenger front nose is sticking out and you've stopped, the car hits you, who is at fault? I would say the driver coming towards you , you have stopped to give to give it way and this was the same but in reverse??

There's a thousand different scenarios here, width of road, other traffic, obstacles, lighting, conditions and a million different combinations of driver awareness and competence, one size fits all answer here won't do but i suspect will win through.

Without independent credible witnesses able to give a considered opinion after seeing the whole episode infold, then there is no way to make a fair judgment of who is at fault... we have the OP's version but there may be other factors the OP is not aware of, such as oncoming or other traffic, obstacles to vision, stray pedestrians, blinding light either from a low sun (leading to dark shadows) or from an oncoming modern car festooned in fairly lights.

I suspect that you, reversing out, will ultimately be held to blame unless you can produce a coherent witness willing to testify that the other driver had ample room and opportunity to go past you, had no obstructions to vision and not blinded by light from any source....the best witness would be the car following the other driver, second best would be a driver coming the other way.

Get ready for the whiplash clams from a possible growing number of passengers in the other car.

Edited by gordonbennet on 05/01/2014 at 11:08