A car one (with pic!) WWYD??

[Kubricklayer]

Yesterday afternoon I was at a drive thru. Ordered my food and was told to wait in one of the bays, so I parked in the only available bay right in the corner of the car park.

Received my food and promptly went to leave. I put the car in reverse, looked in my rear view mirror, saw there was nothing there and started reversing.

Almost immediately there was a coming together of me and a van which was in the perpendicular row of spaces (see pic). Not much damage to either vehicle. Light scuff on my rear wheel arch and bit of paint off the front of his works van.

2 questions:

1. Who was at fault?
2. Should I report to my insuance?

For 1) I think it was a genuine 50:50 accident. His van was so big it was over the front of the space and about a foot from the side of my car. So as I'm reversing I'd have no way of telling he was moving forward. Equally given the close proximity he'd probably not easily see my reverse lights were on.

For 2) I know someone who can fix it for £150, so I'd rather do that than say to my insurance. But the guy was really pissed off calling me a stupid f*king cnt and a halfwit etc so I'm concerned I don't say anything, he tries to claim off me and how the insurance company will view that?.

Appreciate any advice.

We were in a supermarket carpark reversing out of a space, more then halfway out and someone drove into the side.
The insurance company told us that as we were the ones reversing we were more at fault as we had more of a duty to make sure it was clear.
My argument was that had they been paying attention they would have seen we were reversing out and not driven into the the side… luckily for us despite exchanging details the other people never contacted the insurance company and the minor dent in ours was pulled out, thankfully it was very low speed impact but I could never work out how they hadn’t seen us more then halfway out of the space before impact.

I've seen some dodgy moves from people reversing in, especially when pedestrians are trying to walk along in the local supermarket carpark. They look like they are driving forward when you're following behind them, then they suddenly stop and reverse unexpectedly. I figure I have to reverse at some stage so I do it after. Then at least I can access my boot. I just choose parks where I have good visibility.

Apologies I assumed that you are a woman.
Calling you a cunt multiple times is still not in anyway justified

No damage to the rear of my car. Damaged is contained to the rear wheel arch. Couldn't accurately assess damage to his. i saw a small scuff on his front number plate and to the side of the number plate. I couldn't see any damage to the side.

However, he was fking and blinding so I was too intimidated to get a really upclose to his van to say with 100% confidence. Although I have a high level of confidence the damage to his van were front marks I could see.

Completely anecdotal so I don’t even know why I’m writing this.

yet here I am writing it anyway.
My uncle had similar. It ended up 50/50 with insurance.

I’d get mine fixed and then worry about insurance etc if he contacts you. There’s a good chance he won’t bother as he’s aware he made such a twat of himself and won’t want his premium to go up

"But as I say it was the front of him that contacted the side of me." This makes it sound more like it was his fault, as you would have already been partially out of your space for him to hit the side of your car.
Personally, I would report it to my insurer, attaching photo's of the damage, but mindful of the fact that he may make no claim whatsoever and your premium next year could increase as the result of a "no fault" collision (because ruddy insurance companies see any collisions as an indicator of increased risk! 😡 ).

Always? Even at, say, the supermarket? Or a garden centre? How do you load stuff into your boot if it’s a couple of inches away from another car or a wall and facing the wrong way? I often wonder how people get their trolleys round the back of the car to load their shopping in. I reverse in when I don’t need access to the boot. So a lot of the time, but not ‘always.’

As I don't have the drivers contact details, or vehicle reg and I provided him my contact details (well just my phone number, not my name).

Is it a reasonable excuse to say I was waiting for him to contact me so we could exchange insurance details. But as a certain amount of time passed without him contacting me, I'd assumed the insurance company would contact me in due course for further details on the incident?

Or is that a lame excuse?

Apologies I'm a compulsive worrier, but also pragmatically minded so obsessed about optimizing the achieveable outcome in any given scenario.

Oops, just noticed your post @LetTheWindBlowBackYourHair saying similar to me😅

You were at fault. You admit that in your post.
I put the car in reverse, looked in my rear view mirror, saw there was nothing there and started reversing.

Why were you facing forwards, and travelling backwards? You should be looking at where you’re travelling, and using your mirrors as an additional aid. Not facing forward, using your mirrors and hoping for the best. This is also why reverse parking in a space is always much safer.

@JustMyView13 Except OP then states that the van hit the side of his car (rear wheel arch) which suggest the other driver was at fault. At best I would say it's 50/50, but if blame had to be apportioned to one driver or the other, I'd say it's mostly on the van driver.

If you don't tell your insurers and they find out later, you could end up with your policy voided which you'll then have to declare forever when applying for cover.

Give them the information you have and let them deal with it. The last thing you want is for him to report you and you end up with a massive headache all because you didn't say anything at the time.

You don't need to claim, just ask to report it "for information only". I've done that for minor scuffs and it barely impacted my premium, but it meant I was covered if the other party tried to claim later on.

@Kubricklayer Yes, sorry OP, but that is a lame excuse. You should still report it. In fact, the best thing to do is to check the wording of your policy because if it states that you must report all accidents, not doing so could invalidate your insurance and you could be on the hook if you have another accident in this insured year and your insurer refuses to pay out.

If he hit your wheel arch, doesn't that mean he started moving after you? He should have stopped.

I would tell the insurers to make sure you’re covered in the event he makes a claim. You might actually find that if he drove into the side of you, it’s deemed he was at fault anyway and you won’t be held liable at all.

If you try to opt out of insurance company involvement someone like him is likely to start artificially inflating the cost of what it would cost and you won’t be able to inform your insurers at that point without them taking a very dim view and potentially refusing to cover you and cancelling your insurance.

I’d also report the incident to the police not because of the collision (they won’t be interested) but because of the threats. You don’t have to pursue it necessarily but it gives you options.

I would say that if he hit the side of you then he is at fault, not you. You must have already been half way out when he started moving. If it was the other way around, you would have hit the side of his van with your rear.

I'm glad it's not just me 🙂 I think since all these modern cars are installed with all sorts of all singing all dancing cameras there's quite the fashion for reversing in to spaces. It really isn't always for the best!

Tell your insurer because if you don't and they find out via van man it can get difficult. You don't have to claim from them for the repair. I had a similar thing happen to me when a WVM ripped off my wing mirror coming the other way on a narrow lane. It was a blind corner and he was going way too fast but he might have argued that I was too far over and no witnesses or evidence either way. he didn't stop so didn't have any of my details nor I, his. My insurers just asked me to contact them if It ever needed to go further. It didn't affect my renewal or my NCB.

I won't say always but 99% of the time. If I need to access the back of the car then I pull out enough to do so and then load up, but its rare that I can't fit within the space and still access the back and I'd call my car mid size (RAV4).

There are often occasions when it is simply not practicable to reverse into a space, e.g. if you need access to the boot.

And then you are parked partially in the roadway so you are much more of a danger to everyone else.

OP wasn’t observing the direction of travel, which is the first problem. If they were, they would’ve seen the van, and stopped. You’re taught in the UK to stop if another vehicle is nearby when you are in this position, and wait for the vehicle to pass.
OP backed out into the vans line of travel.
Not looking, and then claiming you couldn’t see, isn’t going to hold as a defence unfortunately.

Are you saying you get back to your parking spot with your trolley, realise you can't get to the boot, abandon the trolley, drive out of the space into the road and then load up your shopping while your car is just in the middle of the supermarket road?!

Or perhaps your supermarket car parks are different to mine?!

Just tell your insurance company what you've told us with diagram and that you weren't able to get further details as he was being aggressive. They can't expect you to risk your safety for a phone number. You don't need to ask them to fix it, it can be for information only.

Fault only means they can't claim from the other insurer so this will be a definite fault claim if you don't have his details.

This is helpful. So when I contact the insurance to inform them, I will state I WAS observing the direction of travel, started reversing, was half way out of the space, the van then decided to move forward, I stopped when I saw him moving, but he then contacted my side as likely he wasn't observing his direction of travel.

This will be evidenced by his and my photos, showing his front scuffed and my side scuffed. Also the CCTV and mcDonalds might show his aggressive attitude which may lend further support to a case against his careless behaviour (CCTV didn't catch the event but he was bouncing around the car park and waving his hands all over the place).

Thanks for the input.