Hi there,

I was 'recently' involved in an accident in which the car in front (in an effort to avoid an oncoming police car that had blues and twos on) backed into the front on my car at a speed that severely damaged my front end. The police stopped and witnessed the crash and gave me a crime reference number.

5+ months later im still sitting here without a car and im not on the road. I now find out that it is possibly due to the fact that the other driver is denying it was his fault and saying i crashed into him (even after he admitted liability himself to my insurer over the phone).

I have been without a car for 5 months and have recently had to leave my job due to this, not to mention the hinderence this has had on my quality of life as a whole. My main question is: Is there anything extra I can claim from this person and his insurer seeing as it appears the only reason it has taken this long is because he lied throughout the process or any other action I can take.

Any advice would be helpful as im getting desperate and running out of money now because of all of this and im running out of places to turn. My apologies also for the wall of text.

Thanks in advance.

Hi AK,

You can claim for any loss or damage caused as a result of the accident, however you do have a common law duty to mitigate your losses, that is to limit any loss incurred.

You say you had to leave your job as you had no car- could this have been avoided, were you able to afford a cheap 'run around' and would this have been suitable? Do you have any funds available to you in bank accounts, credit cards, etc, that you could have accessed to replace the vehicle?

I'm not being nosey, and you dont have to answer these questions, but these will be what the insurer would be asking.

Have your insurers not updated you? Have you chased them? Has a police report been requested? Are the officers confirming they witnessed the accident? 5 months seems like a long time for you not to know anything, I would call your insurer and check all this, if everything has been done I suggest you ask them if/when they will look to issue proceedings.