Was rear ended - other driver blamed me and he has a witness

[Charcharm]

was Stationary for around five seconds at a t junction with a give way box, traffic ahead of me meant I couldn’t advance so I was letting one or two cars through. All of a sudden there is a crash from the impact of the car behind me driving into me.

we move over to a side road and exchange details. I’m shaking from the shock at this point. The guy had a friend in the car so has a witness to back up his story, which is that I slammed the breaks out of nowhere which caused this to happen.

This is completely untrue but that’s his story. I don’t have a witness as I didn’t have the presence of mind to get the details of the people around who saw the incident. I’ve made a police report, my husband spoke to the other driver who repeated his story. Will call insurance next.

what’s my situation? There is around £400-£1000 damage to my car and I have a light concussion (despite the low velocity). I feel sick and shouldn’t be on my phone but I’m feeling so stressed, and wanted to see if anyone else has been in a similar situation?

Thanks in advance

I thought I did the right thing? If it says keep clear, and there is no room for me to advance without blocking that area, shouldn’t I wait until traffic moves on and leaves enough space on the other side of the keep clear box? I didn’t think I was allowed to wait in such an area but perhaps I’m wrong

Unless he can prove that you slammed the brakes on deliberately to cause an accident, then he doesn't have a leg to stand on.

Sounds like a crash for cash in reverse, is this their newest scam?

Always the fault of the person behind. He should have been driving slow enough to stop without hitting you. Also will be cctv pretty much everywhere.

Where if happened. I was just outside of the keep clear bit as there was no room further down the road. Meanwhile car/cars were crossing in front of me

Sorry I meant to write ‘keep clear’. My mistake, was all over the place before

As long as your brake lights are working it should go your way. The car behind should always be able to stop if you brake, however hard.

No, you’re right, and @ReadingSoManyThreads is wrong.

You did the right thing. Previous poster is wrong.

stationary car is never at fault.

pass it on to your insurance company. They will argue it out with the other guys’ insurers

Those details were not stated in the original post. No mention of the "keep clear", the way you'd described sounded like traffic had started to move on as you were letting cars out. I've misunderstood based on the lack of detail given in the OP. So, no, now with this extra information, you were not wrong.

Now that OP has given more information, I was incorrect, I had completely misunderstood the situation from what was described in the OP. There was no mention of the further details that have just been disclosed.

I had almost an identical situation except I was on a roundabout and the girl pulled onto it despite a queue of traffic and then tried to blame me. She then tried to drive off but stupidly pulled into a dead end road. She claimed I had stopped without warning. I was pretty loud telling her that she had rear ended me in stationary traffic and i was calling the police.

She got sone for dangerous driving, driving without due care and the claim went 100% to her. My car was only a few days old and the damage was anticipated to be about £12000 , she also had to stand the cost of a like for like hire car on her insurance.

Few months later she went to a no win no fee ambulance chaser to claim on my insurance for whiplash. I have legal cover so told them to try it cos the insurance had already settled and agreed she was at fault!

Some people hope they can win through fear!

My DH was the victim of a deliberate insurance scam (two cars/removed brake lights/slammed on the brakes on a slip road) - he was still held responsible for driving into the back of them. They even had previous of doing exactly the same thing.

You've got nothing to worry about OP - leave your insurance company handle it.

I don't think it's true that it's always the fault of the driver behind. I'm sure it was changed to a case by case basis because of all the scammers deliberately braking in front of people for insurance claims.

This sort of stuff is just hand over to the insurers. It's their job. We pay them enough.

@PeterGriffinsPenisBeaker no they were not 20 something lads, more like 40…

Its on him and a witness who is a friend won't count as not independent

What’s the possible scam people have mentioned? I thought it was the other was around, the car in front would slam their brakes in order to get rear ended.

And thank you everyone for your concern, I did go to the a&e as I had a pretty bad headache and was also nauseous after the impact, and as I need to do more driving later this week I felt I needed to rule out concussion just to be on the safe side. Turns out it’s probably a mild concussion, and I should be fine within 48 hours

Modern cars record braking data through their Event Data Recorders (EDRs or "black boxes") and other connected systems, capturing details like brake pedal pressure, speed, and acceleration before, during, and after events like accidents.

The black box will show that you did not slam your brakes on and that the other driver and his mate are barefaced liars.

So you must call their bluff and try not to worry.

Ordering a dash cam now. It’s been on my to do list for far too long. There used to be scams in my area with ‘cyclists’ throwing their bike in front of your car at stop lights, pretending to be injured - two witnesses conveniently located at the scene of course.

My car is too old for any of that… but will invest in a dash cam now

@Charcharm if its a t junction there are cameras, give the information and you're explanation to police and insurance
and leave it to them to sort out, its unlikely the cameras do not work, they earn councils hundreds of thousands of pounds, good luck xx

I can’t believe people actually do this - so dangerous!

It’s usually always the driver behind at fault as whether you’d have slammed your breaks on or not, why he hadn’t left a safe stopping distance.

When I learned to drive, half a century ago, I was told that in cases where another car hit you from behind it would generally be deemed to be their fault, as they should not be traveling to close to stop in time whatever the circumstances.
Suppose, for example, a child ran into the road, you would try to stop whatever the risk to other road users.

Excellent point and I was going to post to say this, but with the proviso that if you carried on driving the car then that data will have quickly been overwritten. As far as I understand it the data is only retained if the crash is very severe, such that the airbags go off (could be wrong).

Wouldn't do any harm to mention that the data was recorded though if these lying toerags press the point...

{sorry OP, too slow to read your update where you say your car doesn't have this}

It’s always the driver who drives into the back of u who is at fault. Only way it isn’t, is if they have dashcam footage showing u slammed the brakes on. Even then they should have been at a safe breaking distance which is way more than ppl drive at and he wld still be at fault. His witness is his friend that was in his car so obvs they do not take his biased opinion at all.

Go through insurance and get it fixed it’s probably way more damage than ur estimate to fix it. You should also be able to get a courtesy car paid for from his insurance too.