Crashed car

[Noisygirls]

Morning

So last night our au pair clearly drove the car she uses into our other car. So both our cars have damage. One abbroken light and scraped paintwork, the other a big scratch and small dent. The second car will most likely cost us a bit as it’s over wheel arch and panel! Haven’t seen her this morning to ask her about it, but should we ask her to pay the excess? We’d talked about this before we had an au pair and we’re prepaprwd to pick up costs for an accident through insurance. What we didn’t scenario plan for is her hitting one of our cars into the other! Am slightly cross as we thinks he did this as she left to go out last night and didn’t come in to tell us (she’d have had to to get the angle. Any experience of this? At the same time she’s asked if we will pay for her language lessons which will cost us nearly £500. Not that it matters but she is generally fabulous!

Firstly, have you inspected the whole of the car you think she drove into the other car? Just in case it was actually shunted?

Secondly; accidents happen, depending on the excess, and if she is generally not a clumsy oaf who breaks things constantly, I would probably cover it.

Prepare for the rest of Mumsnet to say the opposite...

It happened on our drive so def no shunting. So she must have reversed on back to pull off nose first and went into the other car with the rear corner on one she was driving. Two cars!!!

Hmm. The language lessons are separate - hosts paying for and facilitating language lessons is part of the deal and she shouldn't have to come cap in hand about that, it's a given.

The accident - was she going out socially without your kids? If she was ferrying your kids you definitely cannot ask her to pay anything, but if she was using your car in her own time it's perhaps a greyer area.

Be aware the excess will be a vastly greater amount of money to her than to you, so paying it will probably hit her very hard. Unless she's from a wealthy family and will tap her parents for the money or has a trust fund I'd be inclined to offer her the option of paying half the excess or doing extra babysitting to the value of half, if the accident was on her own time.

If shes cocky and arrogant about the damage I'd be more inclined to make her contribute than if she's apologetic or embarrassed. She may have been fairly terrified about your reaction and put her head in the sand about it last night.

So she’s come to the kitchen and it was the first thing she said. She’s apologised a lot (which has made the world of difference to me) and offered money. I ended up just saying we’ll sort it out. She was going or socially. She also said she doesn’t like driving in the dark so doesn’t think she will again. We’ll chalk it up to experience I guess.

I'm glad she apologised OP.

We don't pay for language classes in keeping with most other families near me, we do pay the registration fee and a little towards them to keep them affordable, but I find they value them more (and attend more regularly) when they pay for them out of pocket money.

It is different in other countries though.