Really to sorry to hear this Wingpig. Glad you are more or less okay yourself though. Hope you get it sorted out soon, one way or another.
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Questions/Support/Help
post-collision paperwork
(99 posts)- Started 9 years ago by wingpig
- Latest reply from le_soigneur
- This topic is
resolved
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Posted 9 years ago #
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"...the repairs would be uneconomic and would stump up for a new one."
Including stumping up for any labour to restore the custom bits to the new replacement?
Posted 9 years ago # -
Your new pen pal is in danger of breaching the tacit agreement made with the polis that his carelessness would be officially ignored on the basis of his undertaking to make private restitution.
Tell him you'll get an estimate from the Bicycle Works and he can choose between the the two but you're not going to fanny around trailing the broken bones of your primary means of transport around bikes shops just because he has no notion of the value of a decent bicycle. If he doesn't want to pay for his poor driving then you can deal with his insurance company instead.
Posted 9 years ago # -
Yeah, I'd say so. When my insurance company replaced my Cannondale frame, the quote covered the cost of transferring all my components across, including non-standard bits. It didn't cover the cost of the bits I decided to replace as they were being moved (near dead chain rings) but that was fair enough.
Posted 9 years ago # -
"If he doesn't want to pay for his poor driving then you can deal with his insurance company instead."
Good line.
Appending "...whereupon they'll charge you for it anyway, multiple times, over the course of the next few years via increased premiums" would probably be overdoing it.
Posted 9 years ago # -
@Wingpig - Are his insurance details something the police would be able to supply me with if I go to them if I continue to be stalled and/or not be supplied with insurance details?
I don't think the Police will supply the insurance details, however for the grand sum of £4, you can get them yourself:
http://www.askmid.com/askmidenquiry.aspx
I'd be just dealing with them, he's unlikely to pony up out of his own pocket at this rate, and quite frankly, his insurance should be aware of the risks he presents anyway.
Robert
Posted 9 years ago # -
Don't forget to bill them the £4 for the details he failed to provide.
Posted 9 years ago # -
I know the polis deal badly with bike accidents but I think where there's no ambulance they fit them into the box of non-injury RTAs to be handled with the minimum of paperwork for them either between gentlemen or insurance companies.
I think they take a pretty dim view of this sort of thing. It risks them having to become more involved than they'd like to be. If he continues to hesitate, they may be willing to pop by and remind him of his obligations.
Posted 9 years ago # -
Are you hiring a bike in the meantime? Because that would be a handy reimbursement to encourage cooperation...
It cost Tesco Insurance £2k when I intersected a van with my Volvo, and a good chunk of that was hire fees for a replacement van.
Posted 9 years ago # -
PS: if you do want to force the guy to share his insurance details, you want section 170 (5) of the Road Traffic Act:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/52/section/170
This appears to rely on you being injured. I take it you've taken some gory photos of the road rash, just in case?
Posted 9 years ago # -
[e] (SMS):"For the cost you got for getting the bike fixed I could buy a brand new bike"
I had this ridiculous argument too some years ago… I'm not sure how much reasoning can actually be done here, but you can buy a functioning car for pennies - would he suggest replacing a fancy car with one about to go to the scrapyard?
He's a very lucky epithet that you're so reasonable and have not included your own flesh and blood injuries in this…
Posted 9 years ago # -
Got photos. Exhibited injuries to polices.
Even as the victim I would consider hiring a bike to be a wee-takingly expensive move, given what bike hire costs, so I'm on the slowheavyuprightyspare, currently with added winter-tyre cumbersomeness.***
Eventually replied along these lines:
wpg (SMS and email):~" Customised, isn't it? Dynamo hub, haven't I? Strong wheels for daily commuting, shouldn't we? Hornbars, bar-end shifters, horn-compatible levers, weren't there? Shop-bought ready-to-ride would require labour to modify, won't you? Insurance, have you?"
I'll keep the "try the same thing with a fancy carbon roadie and you'll quickly be into 'I could buy a secondhand 2008 Vauxhall Vectra Life (5-door hatchback) for that!" territory, but just consider yourself lucky that not only was I on a relatively affordable bike but that I was able to walk away from the collision" for another time.
Posted 9 years ago # -
At this point you could just say "I'm trying to save you money here by repairing it as cheaply as possible, but if you do want to buy me a new one, here it is, but don't forget it doesn't come with a rack etc. which will all be extra."
At the end of the day, if he wanted a low repair bill he should have crashed into a cheap bike. If someone trashed a Ferrari they wouldn't dare suggest a new Micra just because it was cheaper... :)
Posted 9 years ago # -
I genuinely admire your patience and nature here @Wingpig
TBH, I don't think I'd have given them the first chance to make reparations "on the side" having suffered hassles in the past.
I hope it goes without further hitches
Posted 9 years ago # -
The law firm I mentioned at top of this string should get you repairs and clothing as I said when my pal was knocked off. They extracted over £1000. The costs of the legal firm also met by the insurance company I understand.
Posted 9 years ago # -
Ooh, I'm feeling angry just reading about what the driver has said to you about needing 3 quotes.
I have had to deal fairly recently with helping a person close to me who hit a parked vehicle with their car. This was done using the "I'll give you the cash" option in terms of recompensing for the repair work. We did not ask for 3 quotes. The quote they presented was higher than we thought it would be, but not exorbitantly so, and most likely was going to repair the car back to the way it was, which is only fair, so it was paid without further questions.
If the driver in your situation is playing silly buggers, which they clearly are, just tell them that you will contact their insurance agent if they are unhappy with the £700 quote, and ask them to provide the details. If I were in their shoes, I know what I'd do if presented with that option.
Posted 9 years ago # -
Right.£600 gets a Kaffenback frame as part of a minimally-functional bicycle.
Whilst £600 is less than nearly £700, shame it has no front dynamo yet; that means either buying a new hub dynamo to fit that wheel (which looks impossible when the wheel has 28 spokes, which means a different rim, new spokes and also the wheelbuild charge) or re-using the existing non-disc fork, incurring headset-swapping labour and the wheel rebuild cost. Also, still no rack, and still short an Armadillo, equals more than nearly £700. Also, six fewer spokes where they're most needed, and not yet sporting comfortable hornbars.
Posted 9 years ago # -
I genuinely admire your patience and nature here @Wingpig
+1
unruffled zen extraordinaire
Posted 9 years ago # -
How about "here's a list of what you broke with your impatience and your car. If you can source it and assemble it into a working bicycle more cheaply, be my guest and I look forward to receiving the bike."
Posted 9 years ago # -
@wingpig
It's a failing common to many bicyclists to be reasonable and calm in situations where a cold heart and a steely gaze are more useful.
Your new friend has written off your primary means of transport and hurt you. Now (s)he is quibbling over the bill? Let slip the lawyers and bike builders of war.
I'm very glad that you are but scraped and bruised, but further direct dealings with the epithet will, I'll wager, make you sad and angry.
Have an excellent Winterval.
Posted 9 years ago # -
I wouldn't have come over as calm and zennish in the period immediately following the impact. I don't think zens are allowed to say what I shouted. I started being sadly angry straight away, even as I found myself able to get back to my feet, as I knew that if the frame was damaged that the exact model is no longer available and that I was likely to face some sort of prolonged dispute/argument, possibly involving loss-adjustment, maybe even people trained in the exoneration of
[epithet]s through the discreditation of their victims, possibly even requiring that I acquire one myself.Police-in-law reckons that the driver would have been charged on the spot if I had, for example, broken something. I'm not sure I like the idea of the driver getting out of something just because I didn't think it appropriate to waste an ambulance on someone clearly still self-ambulatory, so perhaps the police should have made the point that "if you 'refuse' treatment and are able to walk away, so will he".
Earlier this morning:
wpg (SMS): Please confirm that you accept an additional inspection/estimation charge, in addition to restoration costs and the initial £25 fee from the Cycle Service. Please advise whether you are going to voluntarily provide me with your insurance details.
Whilst giving him a reasonable time to respond before interpreting this as "refusal to supply insurance details" and informing the polices thereof, I'll maybe give the Bike Works a call to see what their non-websited harvest-surviving-component and rebuild-new charges would be.
I've a nice email ready with the pre-built Kaffenback drag-up-to-spec illustration on it for him to read over winterfeast. I suppose I'd better ask him to provide a few sample I-saw-a-bikes-for-less-than-that of his own for me to calmly and reasonably pick apart.Posted 9 years ago # -
Polices speaked to perpetrator. Perpetrator feels estimate disproportionate to the damage caused. Police reminded him what actually happened. Hopefully polices read out from their notebook what I'd said about the potential cost of replacement excluding labour. If perpetrator not contact me within few days, call polices to get insurance details from their records.
It would be different if I had been walking along the road, carrying a bicycle frame, rim, pannier rack and tyre at bumper height and had been crashed-into - requesting a labour charge to assemble the replacements in such a situation would be cheeky. Though he claims to have not seen me riding it he can hardly deny that the bicycle was fully-assembled when it was bouncing off his bonnet towards the ground.
Posted 9 years ago # -
"he claims to have not seen me riding"
Perhaps it's time for compulsory eye tests after crashes?
Posted 9 years ago # -
Go to his Insurants, this level of idiocy needs to be punished repeatedly through loss of ncb.
Good of the police to go speak to the plumb.
Posted 9 years ago # -
Grrr. If you ever need to call the police to chase something up and get through to their call centre via 101, make sure you record the call, just in case what you're told doesn't match what police at a desk in a station say. Odd, seeing as the people in the call centre told me to go to a desk.
Posted 9 years ago # -
This doesn't sound good. Are you at liberty to divulge?
Posted 9 years ago # -
I'm just impressed you manage to hang on long enough to get through to 101
Posted 9 years ago # -
Apparently the police don't pass on drivers' insurance details to their mere victims, only to their victims' solicitors if/when they pay money to employ one, which looks like a potentially long-drawn-out and pricey way to go.
I shall try getting hold of one of the attending officers to see if they're prepared to reveal/paraphrase what the driver said to them, which I couldn't overhear as they split up and took statements simultaneously (presumably deliberately to prevent eavesdropping or argument) - I don't know if he stuck to the "I didn't see you" or switched to a weaselly excuse involving thin air and high-viz. If the driver's statement was less fault-admitting than he was prior to the arrival of the police and their notebooks then it would be potentially extremely pricey to start initiating a civil claim.
My home insurance covers me a bit but I don't want to involve them (and potentially wipe out any recompense via sneaked-up premiums in the future) unless they can do a thing where they speak to the clearly careless driver's insurer (if they count as someone to whom the police are willing to divulge things) and extract all necessary costs (which also has the benefit of the driver's insurer getting to hear about their jolly exploits).
Posted 9 years ago # -
tempted to set up a poll to see how many of us think that wing pig should go see one of those nice cycle legal firms that has been recommended.
Posted 9 years ago #
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