Insurance Advice Needed, Please

Honest John Back Room » Legal matters
What is life like with your car? Let us know and win £500 in John Lewis vouchers | No thanks
View Threaded
Tue 15 Nov 2011 15:25
Insurance Advice Needed, Please - daveweim

Hi All,

I need some insurance advice, please. My girlfriend and I were invovled in an accident earlier this year when we were towing our caravan. Essentially, we were approaching a small roundabout and wanted to turn right. As we did so, a car came up in the left lane and, as we had swung out to complete the maneouvre we clipped his front wing. The third party insists that we are at fault but we have denied liability on the grounds that he should have left the appropriate space for us to complete the maneouvre (which we had signalled our intention to do). Anyway, the third party has insisted that unless we admit liability they will go to court. We have never been in this situation before and would appreciate advice as to what we could expect to happen if we go to court and lose? Our car insurance policy provides us with legal costs and they have said that their legal team will look at the case and make a judgement on whether we can expect to win or lose. If their judgement is negative can we still at this point decide to cut our losses and admit liability (we just don't want the hassle) even though we firmly believe that we are not liable.

Many thanks

Reply | Report as offensive | Link
Tue 15 Nov 2011 16:00
Insurance Advice Needed, Please - tony g
Hi dave,
It seems to me that it's your fault if the other driver was alongside you when you began the manouver ,if you swung to the left before turning right and his car was stationery ,you would be at fault.

However if you had begun the manoeuvre and the other driver had been approaching you from the rear and then collided with you ,then he would have been at fault.In the same way as a driver is always at fault if he collides with a car in front .Put simply you should always allow yourself time and room to stop ,if a car in front of you stops without warning.

It seems unlikely the other party will take you to court .If he had a genuine case his insurance company would have reached a decision as to who,s at fault with your insurers .

Is he insured ?

If he takes you to court ,it's likely to be the small claims court ,you both sit down in a room with a judge .it's very informal.He will listen to both sides of the argument .He will make a decision straight away.if you lost you will be liable for approximately £120 in court costs ,plus what the judge decides is a fair cost for repairing the other parties damaged car.

Good luck


Tony g
Reply | Report as offensive | Link
Tue 15 Nov 2011 17:31
Insurance Advice Needed, Please - RT

Third party liability while towing is covered by the car insurance - I'd leave it to your insurers, that's what you've paid for - let them decide whether to defend or pay up - it's your insurer that would have to pay out not you.

Reply | Report as offensive | Link
Wed 16 Nov 2011 10:31
Insurance Advice Needed, Please - daveweim

Hi All,

Many thanks for the advice - greatly received and we will do what you say and let the insurance companies sort it out and see what happens. We are just worried about the court side of things. The lanes approaching the roundabout are narrow and given that we were in a LR Defender with caravan the third party would have had to squeeze past us on the inside lane. The third party was not alongside us at the beginning of the manoeuvre but rather behind us and then moved into the inside lane as we started the manoeuvre. We haev submitted photo's of the scene, which makes it clear how narrow the lanes are and how tight the roundabout is. Interestingly, having checked the Highway Code, that makes it clear that one should allow sufficeint space for a vehicle in front to complete such a manoeuvre.

Thanks again.

Reply | Report as offensive | Link

We give you the low down on how to save on insurance, little-known tricks and tips, what insurance groups mean and how to use insurance aggregators to beat insurers.

Insurance group finder and how to save on insurance