Car Insurance Frustrations

BANG - The sound every driver dreads.

You're driving along the road, you're sticking to the speed limits, you approach a junction, check your mirrors, signal and start to break as the flow of traffic up ahead is tailing back. CRUNCH! You jolt sharply forward, the car shunts towards the car ahead, but you are a safe distance away from it and stop with space to spare.

You look angrily in the rear view mirror to see another motorist in shock, you indicate that you both need to pull over and when safe to do so pull in on the side of the road. You exit your car and walk as calmly as you can over to the other drivers vehicle. You look back at your vehicle and see a dent in the rear bumper, your opposite numbers bumper contains a lovely shade of your cars paintwork on it and is also dented. They don't exit their car. Hmmm, you think this unusual. You walk to their side and they say straight away that they didn't hit you! Keep calm. You ask them quietly but assertively that how, if that was the case, you have a nice new dent in the rear of your car? They continue to say that they didn't hit you and refuse to give you their insurance details. The traffic has moved on and there are no witnesses to the incident. You ask them again for their details, but again they just say they didn't hit you. You have no choice but to phone the police.

Photo used under creative commons licence from AndyFitz on Flickr.com

Connecting through to the police you explain the situation and ask them for advice. The police explain that if the other car driver leaves the scene then you should make a note of their registration details and drive to a police station to report the incident as a failure to stop accident. As you are speaking on the phone the other driver realises that they can't get out of the situation and reluctantly gives you their insurance details. You both drive off having exchanged details and hope that their information was correct.

Should you have had to go through this? No, but unfortunately more and more people are refusing to admit liability for accidents which they plainly caused. Sometimes they even get away with it. Sometimes they manage to get dual responsibility for the incident. It is people like the driver above, who caused the accident, that show how much injustice there is around nowadays. I've always been brought up to admit your mistakes and take responsibility for your actions. If I had been the one to hit the other car then yes I would have held my hands up, apologised, exchanged my details and admitted it was my fault because it blatantly was. I should take responsibility for my actions and lapse in concentration and I should be the one to have the claim made against my insurance.

The trouble is, because people don't want their insurance to go up and their no claims bonus to be lost or affected they won't take responsibilty for their actions and unless you have witnesses to the incident it can sometimes be very hard to prove otherwise. I wonder whether it is the insurance companies who have started this trend in people not taking liability? With the advent of no claims bonuses, you encourage people to protect themselves too much. No one wants the cost of their insurance to go up, but at the end of the day if you caused the accident then its only right that you have to pay a bit more next year. Just like it's right if you're caught speeding that you declare your points and take the increased premium. Don't take it out on the people around you. Grow some, take it on the chin and get on with things.

Smartphones Impact On Society
Are Smartphones & Cell Phones Impacting Negatively On Family, Business And Social Relationships? I've started to realise that although smartphones and c...

Fab Smartphone Accessories
Everyone likes to look cool with the latest smartphone accessory, but to add to this coolness you need to have the best smartphone accessories currently on ...

Top Spectrum Games
This article looks at the best spectrum games that were released for the ZX Spectrum. It includes video footage of the games, links to where to play the game...

Yin and Yang Jewellery
Yin and Yang jewellery has recently become more and more popular. Young and old alike have started to rediscover the beauty of Yin and Yang, the way complime...

Classic Art Posters
Classic Art Posters can cover such a broad category. One persons idea of a classic poster could be someone else's piece of tat. This lens attempts to highlig...

TOP RUNNING BACKS OF ALL TIME
This article looks at the Top Running Backs Of All Time. It examines the greatest running backs that have graced the NFL since the league was formed in 1920....

Tartiflette Savoyarde
Tartiflette is a dish I first came across while on a skiing holiday in the French Alps, but I fell in love with tartiflette whilst working as a chalet host i...

SHOULD I BUY A SUZUKI ALTO?
An owners view of the Suzuki Alto. This article details why I chose to buy a Suzuki Alto and how I've found the Alto since my purchase in 2009. The article ...

Seagull Torment
A story about one man's fight against the tyranical seagull mafia. I live by the sea. I know, I know, I'm lucky to live by the sea. It takes me 10 minutes t...

Car Wash Story
Washing your car can be a chore - You sit at home and out of the window you notice your car looking grubby. There's a go faster mud stripe down both sides, h...

Bizarre Names
Names dominate our lives. There are amusing names, funny names, strange names, boring names, dull names, long names, short names, double barrelled names, biz...

Gold Dust WWE
The WWE has had many strange and curious characters in it's history, but none are quite as strange and bizarre as WWE's Gold Dust. This lens looks at the ca...