A (potential) car incident

[hahavzv]

Hi mumsnetters,

I'm in a situation and I just don't know what to think about it (not trying to be defensive) and don't know how to handle this situation.

A person has rang up my kids school saying someone has hit their car and if this is not sorted then they will escalate this further.

I was contacted today by the school to say is this your car reg and it was. My car has been caught on cctv (apparently) hitting a car and 'running off'.

Now, I am not aware of hitting a car, well not that I know of. I was given the persons contact details which I was happy to take so I could discuss this further with them. I rang them and they were extremely defensive saying that I am a bad person and who would do such a thing etc. I asked have you personally seen this cctv footage and also if you could send me pictures of the damage done to your car. They also mentioned that there was an eyewitness who left a note with tier number saying that it was a hit and run.

I am not a hit and run type of person so this person has gotten the wrong end of the stick.

I have asked the person to also send me the cctv footage so I can review it too. They have refused to do so. I don't know why. They have said you can contact the school and obtain this your self.
I will be looking to get this done and check out the whole footage.

But what do you think I should do? A part of me is like maybe I did hit a car but unaware. The photos of the damage are scratched as if bumper to bumper scrape kind of thing.

Any advice please.

By the way, I am the only driver of the car and it was at the time that I would've been around at the school.

Scam.

Someone left a note on my car down a residential street where I park to access the train station one day claiming I’d hit their car outside their house when parking, which I was 99% sure hadn’t happened.

Checked my own car and not a scratch on it.

Thought on it when I got in and drove back to the road to see that the house had various CCTV cameras so messaged the number they left and said that I didn’t believe I had done it, that I didn’t park there until 8am so there is every chance another car was parked there prior/the night before, and that I had noted she had CCTV and could she please send me the footage. Never heard from her again.

I’m actually really confused about the legitimacy of what you’re telling us. Maybe you’re the person who’s trying to scam and are looking for all the tricks as I’ve zero clue why you haven’t just told them to contact your insurers, or contacted them yourself, or just asked the teachers at the school run today or answered any of the questions given to you here.

Under the various bits of legislation,

Your Insurers have to pay ANY and ALL of a valid claim against you for damage to a 'Third Party' in a Road Traffic Collision you are responsible for.

IE any damage to the other party's vehicle.

The 'Excess' is what YOU have to pay towards any damage YOU have caused to your vehicle which is covered by your insurance.

Just for the hell of it report the CCTV cameras to the ICO

What a curious situation. Keep us updated OP, I hope you get to the bottom of it!

Get your insurers involved.

That's what they're there for

This happened to me @hahavzv I supposedly hit a car in a carpark. The police turned up on my doorstep and there was a ‘witness’.
Not a scratch on my car, but seemingly I crushed their wing. Insurers were involved and my insurers paid out. I’m still fuming about it years later. I reckon the witness was a friend and they were just scamming money for repairs.

yeah red flags and alarm bells - say through insurance isn't a choice - I would say its a works vehicle and they don't do anything else (our own company so technically true for me) but it often scares them off if anything seems official, I would also make a point of documenting photos of my vehicle all round incl video to show no issues

Well of course it would affect you more, if it proved that you did it. The other car was parked, so it can only be your fault here. It's not like an accident involving two moving vehicles where they advise you not to admit liability, even if you know it's your fault.

It doesn't sound as if you have much of a leg to stand on if it was caught on CCTV. However, I'd ask the school to view the footage first, and to be sent a copy of it to show to your insurance company if necessary.

Then ask to inspect the damage on the other person's car and see if it matches up with any scuffs or dents on yours, like traces of their paintwork on your car at the point where your car appeared to make contact.

If you genuinely did not realise you'd hit the car, it's possible you just gently dinked against their bumper, in which case there may not be any visible damage on either car. They will need to prove there is visible damage to be able to claim on your insurance, so have a look first before you hand over any details.

I’ve always thought cctv can only cover your own property and so ours is carefully positioned so it does. However on two separate occasions the police have knocked to see if we picked anything up when there have been incidents at the neighbours.

if you see evidence to suggest you did cause the damage then you can insist it’s dealt with by insurance so tell the other party you won’t be dealing directly with them. That’s why you pay for insurance. Do you have protected no claims discount? I’d have asked for the cctv evidence as soon as I was informed about this to establish whether you were involved or not. If there is no evidence you don’t have to do anything. The onus is on them to prove their allegations

Suggest that she meets you at your local police station - with her car.
You are unlikely to hear any more.

Several people have suggested you contact your insurers and hand it over to them. Is anything stopping you doing this?

Judging by the photos I’d be very surprised if you actually did that damage OP, I’d need real proof before admitting to anything.

This all sounds so dodgy and like a scam. CCTV and then say you’re going through insurance only

Yeah I’d do this

Yes!

The fact that if she hands it over to her insurer, they will quite simply pay out to the 3rd party for damage OP did not do.

You can't just "hand it over" and assume the insurer will go about making sure it's definitely the OP's fault. That's not how it works in a case like this.

If she says "someone says I hit their car and I don't know if I did", they aren't going to send Poirot out to look into it; the insurer's cheapest option is for them to pay the scammer and then OP gets hit with premium increases for a fault claim.

It's up to OP to fight this off if she thinks it wasn't her. No one else will do that for her.

Should we also report all the dash cams driving around all the time recording footage? The very footage that the police ask for every single day when they want to find evidence to help solve crimes? Someone I know has been visited by the police twice asking if his door cam picked up anything further down his road, maybe they reported to the ICO as part of their investigations

Great suggestion!

OP do you realise you can be seen in the reflection of the last photo you posted?

You could have possible scraped the car and not realised.

i would review the CCTV images and if you did scrape the car… contact your car insurance

Years ago DH was driving us out of the school car park when another car started flashing and honking us. We stopped. She got out of her car and yelled at us through the window and said we’d just hit her car and were we just going to drive off? We both replied calmly and firmly that we couldn’t have hit it because we didn’t feel or hear anything and none of the sensors had gone off. She went back to her car remarkably quickly and that was that.

A couple of weeks later an email came round from school to state that someone had phoned to complain that earlier that day they’d been in the car park and a somebody had hit their car and driven off without stopping.

Decidedly dodgy.

If you aren't provided with proof, there IS NO PROOF

Tell them to jog the fuck on