To take them to court?

[AnxietyLevelMax]

I had a car accident 3 months ago. I believe it was not my fault although the other party’s insurance company is not willing to negotiate with my insurance company and appointed solicitors to take me (and the insurance company) to court if I don’t pay the settlement figure.

so i either agree to take them to court, which will be handled by my insurance company and their lawyers but i will have to attend (have no control over how this people will handle the case) or i just agree for my insurance company to pay them but then my car insurance etc might go rocket high and will need to face any other consequences i guess.

i was at the roundabout, three lines when u get to the roundabout, at the roundabout and when u exit the roundabout. You can go straight from all three lines. I was on the third line going straight (second exit). It was very very busy and the other car just jumped in front of me and i hit him. He claims he was next to me and wanted to go to the third exit, but was literally in front of me when i hit him, i hit his rear passenger door, he completely turned around, his wheel came off, back door and bumper was smashed etc. to me he was speeding and entered the roundabout and wanted to make it in front of everyone but it happened so quick i cannot be sure. It is my word against his. No cameras or witnesses.

first picture is from Google map and shows the road when u get to the roundabout
second picture shows the actual roundabout, i was exactly where that white car is when i hit him

I see what you mean now - we have a similar lane at our local roundabout and it drives me crazy as people assume its OK to go one way due to the markings and other people assume its OK to go one way due to the markings but they will crash if they don't look out for each other.
I would settle if I was you - he was being a dick but you hit him and sounds like he was also following his road markings.

100%. You were in the straight ahead lane, you were going into a three lane exit road. He undertook and cut across your exit.

I can't see how he isn't in the wrong tbh. You may not have checked blind spot bur he cut you up, you didn't change lane so why do people think you're more at fault?! Odd.

I would say that that is your fault. Sorry. You shouldn’t be exiting the roundabout from the third lane because it involves cutting straight across two other lanes of traffic.

I think you stand a good chance in court if his statement says he was in lane 2 and intending taking the third exit and that the accident happened in lane three. Unless otherwise signposted, it is incorrect to take the second lane of a three lane roundabout for the third exit.

I also think, from your description of where the damage occured on his car, if it happened in lane three there is no way for that to have happened without it being his fault. To hit his rear driver door in your lane, he must have moved into you when there wasn't space, cutting you off. It's not as though you rear ended him. Unless he's claiming he was moving over, stalled (or otherwise was stopped dead before fully moving into the lane - which you shouldn't be doing on a roundabout, you go into the innermost lane you need and make your way to the outside as you approach your exit - and you came along with plenty of time to break but rammed his stationary car instead!)

If your insurance company is prepared to take this to court, personally I think you should. You don't really have much to lose and it looks, to me, like you're right.

It's possible the reason the other insurance company hasn't settled is because the other driver is a dick and cannot fathom he is a shit driver, so has refused to accept his insurance company's initial suggestion they pay out. It doesn't necessarily mean that insurance company thinks it's your fault.

What does he say happened

I think you are totallyat fault, trying to exit a rundabout from lane 3

Where you have quite clearly assumed that you can in effect drive across two lane of traffic ( also on the roundabout) to get to your exit, regardless of where they are going.

Sorry I can't see a way you'd get no fault here especially given the update of the signs which clearly say inside lane is not for straight on. At the end of the day even you are not fully sure what happened as you didn't see him and you drove in to him. 50/50 at best

By that stage you should have been in the middle lane and indicating that you were going to turn off. He may indeed have been driving too fast, but as it was you who needed to indicate to turn off you were in the wrong.

You cannot turn off at a roundabout from the outside lane. That is reserved for cars continuing round the roundabout. Even if it looks as if you are just going straight ahead you need to be in the inside lane if there is only one carriageway to go into, or the inside and middle if there are two. NEVER the outside lane if you are turning off.

I don't know if anyone has pointed it out, but it's usual for large roundabouts to have straight arrows to indicate that you are entering a roundabout (presumably to avoid people entering the wrong way round the roundabout). It's not to indicate "ahead only", as its a roundabout lol.

OP was not necessarily in the wrong lane as on large roundabouts its expected that you move across lanes to access your exit; crucially as she was the one moving across lanes she is at fault here.

From this, you were in the wrong lane but so was he. They all show ahead but clearly the first two show to go to the A421. The 3rd is for another turning. This also means if he wanted to go past the A421 exit, he was in the wrong lane. 50/50 I'd say.

If your insurers can get 50/50 I'd be happy with that. He was ahead and you didn't see him til you hit him.

I must admit I was a bit confused originally but now you've drawn the diagram it's clear he should have been in the lane you were in for taking the third exit,not cut across you to get where he needed to be. If you show that hand drawn diagram in court, I can't see how they can blame you at all.

But OP was also in the wrong lane. The third Lane doesn't go to the A421 as the sign indicates. She should have been in the first or second Lane and he should have been in the third.

Yes, I think this too! Thought I was going mad! To me the three arrows OP showed marked on the road don’t mean “straight ahead only”, they mean “this way to massive roundabout” - and it’s the signage that tells you what lane you are supposed to be in.
i think the 3 lanes at OPs exit are red herrings because I don’t think the right-hand one is actually the same lane as the right hand one entering the roundabout - i think lanes 1 and 2, when you enter, are the ones that exit at OPs exit and become 3 at that stage (all a bit moot I guess).

fwiw this is my read:

OP should have been in left or middle lane as per sign. Being in right lane is not necessarily an issue as she can move across to exit, but obviously needs to check her left hand side the way you would when exiting any roundabout from right hand lane.

OP mistakenly thought that being where she was + the fact of 3 lanes in her exit, meant that she was not changing lanes or crossing anyone’s path when leaving the roundabout. When in actual fact she was leaving the right hand lane to cross at least one more lane of traffic on roundabout.

the other driver was also in the wrong lane as according to the signage if he wanted to turn right he should have been in OPs right hand lane.

i think in the end both drivers made errors and didn’t look/weren’t aware of what was going on around them.

what I can’t work out though is whether the other car was still in middle lane, ie OP drove into him when leaving roundabout (while thinking she was still in one lane because she thought that her lane continued towards the exit without impediment)

OR

whether other car realised he was in wrong lane, and moved right, to continue round the roundabout, and in doing so cut OP up, while she was going to exit the roundabout, not realised that cars could be coming up her left.

i think the latter explains it, because that is how OP drove into his passenger side rear door and not driver side??

It's possible the reason the other insurance company hasn't settled is because the other driver is a dick and cannot fathom he is a shit driver, so has refused to accept his insurance company's initial suggestion they pay out. It doesn't necessarily mean that insurance company thinks it's your fault.

That isn't how insurance companies work though. They wouldn't take a case to court if they didn't feel they could win. A policyholders refusal to accept they were in the wrong doesn't factor in to it, the insurance company have the right to accept liability and if the other driver wanted to pursue it further he would have to contact a solicitor himself to pursue it

Lots of people are, like you, assuming this is a normal roundabout. It isn't, the road where OP was was three lanes wide, but it looks like there are no lane markings at all.

Normally in a roundabout, there are lane markings, and they belong to the roundabout, meaning the OP, being in the third lane, would have to cut across two roundabout lanes to get off. But there are no lanes, so she's not cutting across anything.

OP sees the road ahead before, during and after the roundabout as one continuous entity, so regards herself as always being in the third lane of a straight road when someone swerved across her path. This interpretation is not quite right, because, apparently, there were, for a short stretch of that straightish road, no lanes. The other driver was entitled to go right, unless he was doing so recklessly.

I think the party in the wrong here is whoever designed this ridiculous roundabout.

@AnnaNext - we have a roundabout identical to this that we go through every day - arrows are exactly as per your diagram. It’s totally shit that OP’s roundabout had three ‘straight ahead’ arrows - @AnxietyLevelMax - it would be interesting to see if the roundabout had a higher than normal number of accidents - freedom of Information request? I’d be raging if I were you as this roundabout and it’s arrows are literally an accident waiting to happen.

You've admitted at least partial liability in your initial post, stating i hit his rear passenger door, he completely turned around, his wheel came off, back door and bumper was smashed etc.

It would be hard to say you had no fault given that he must have been ahead of you when you hit him. Even if he was in the wrong lane and you were in the right one - which I'm not clear is the case - you would be expected to check it was safe to take the exit, you would be expected to take evasive action when the car drew alongside and then in front of you. Spinning the other car, hitting it with force to rip the wheel off, it must have been a reasonably hard impact.

Not quite the same, but I wrote my car off many years ago on a roundabout. Three lanes, left and middle were both left and straight on. I was going straight on on the left lane, other driver was going left in the middle lane. It went 50/50 and they have since changed the signage on the roundabout.

I'd say 50/50 to your insurance company and see what others say. You were both in the wrong lane and you still ran into the back of him even if he undercut you...

If it goes to court you have to attend to give your evidence.

In my experience you're both at fault so I'd be taking a 50/50 to put an end to it.
Your insurance will go up anyway because of the claim so clogging up the courts for the same outcome is pointless
It takes ages to sort out as the courts are so busy.

I'm absolutely flabbergasted that anybody thinks you could be liable here. It makes me questions the drivers we have on the road with us!

All lanes were straight on. He was in the middle line, and tried to go right around the roundabout, despite being in a lane that only goes straight on, cutting into somebody's path in the meantime.

How that makes the OP liable, or partially at fault, is lost on me 🤷🏼‍♀️

The rule is give to the right so he changed lanes. If I understand it correctly then at the point you were at the signage allows both lanes to go straight on.

I think it depends on what he has said in his statement to the insurance Co, is he saying simply you were in the wrong lane, is he admitting that he changed lanes not realising that at that point the road signage allowed traffic going on to use the outside lane.

I can see why the insurance thinks 50:50.

On this kind of roundabout the arrows don't mean "straight on" though. You're supposed to select the appropriate lane and remain in it until you move over to exit the roundabout.

In my interpretation of OPs posts, both OP and driver had "selected" the wrong lanes but only OP was definitely crossing the path of other traffic (its still a roundabout, not a straight section of road so the rules of a roundabout apply, give way to the left and use MSM) as the other driver could be considered to be following around the roundabout. The fact there aren't lanes on this roundabout are reason to give extra caution.