Witnessed car door ding. Rude offenders drove away without exchanging information. What can I do?
Was in Idaho springs, CO yesterday afternoon and as we were at the car in the parking lot to leave one the passengers in the car next to us opened the door and scratched my 3 week old car. Without acknowledging what they had done, I waved to confront the passengers in the car letting them know the person in the back seat had scratched my car while opening their door. An older women in the back of the car on the opposite side rolled down the window and yelled “we did not scratch the car and we are leaving”. My fiancé and I both let them know we just watched it happen. The person that did it was silent the entire time (seemed like she knew she was guilty). The lady who yelled in the car responded saying it was our fault for parking to close even though they were parked on the yellow line. They then began backing out to drive away. I asked them to come out and take a look and exchange information, but they mocked us, refused and starting backing out of the parking spot. My fiancé stepped behind their car to attempt to get them to stop but they kept reversing to the point where she was being pushed by the car. Luckily, she stepped away for safety. The car was full of 4 older adults maybe 50+, they were quite rude especially the one passenger yelling at us. My fiancé and I are rather non confrontational and froze in the situation, stunned how immature and terrible they had handled what had happened. The damage to the my car is really not that important, I am wondering what can be done at this point to teach them a lesson. I have pictures of the license plate, we were able to trace to a rental car from Alamo. We tried calling the non emergency police line but never got a response ( will plan to follow up tomorrow). Additionally, we called the restaurant (Westbound and down ) which is right in front of the parking lot to see if they had security camera footage for evidence, hoping to hear back from the GM tomorrow.
I’ve never done anything like this before. Is it worth filing a police report? Will this affect my car insurance if I do?
Witnessed car door ding. Rude offenders drove away without exchanging information. What can I do?
byu/Goodboywally2021 inInsurance
Posted by Goodboywally2021
1 Comment
Let it go, especially if the scratch is small and will likely buff out or be fixed with a paint touch up pen available for a few bucks at an auto parts store. It’s not worth the hassle, especially because there’s effectively no chance the person who dinged your car will ever be held accountable. Dings and scratches happen, and there’s simply no justice for things like this. It’s not worth your time and energy to get the police involved, to try to obtain and review video footage from a restaurant over damage you claim is “not that important” because you want to teach a carful of older adults who are likely from out of state a lesson? They drove off and haven’t given this a second thought, and that’s the best thing you can do now.
Whatever you think is gonna happen is not going to happen – the restaurant GM bringing you in to review video footage that somehow shows what happened clearly and making you a copy, the police watching this video and even bothering to take a report, and then what? Somehow you or the Idaho Springs PD get Alamo to divulge the renter’s details, who will not be anywhere near Idaho Springs by the time this all plays out, who’s gonna say they have no idea what you’re talking about anyway? Who’s going to pursue them in whatever state they’ve returned to? Are you going to get your insurance involved and have a claim on your record? Are you going to handle it yourself and call the local PD where ever they live to get the renter to do what exactly? Their local PD isn’t interested, Idaho Springs PD isn’t interested. You’ll spend lots of time and effort doing all this and still end up with no satisfaction. All over a parking lot scratch.
Just move on, forget about it – there’s no lesson to be taught here, except maybe for you to learn to let the little things go. And if you’re going to be worked up over door dings on your car, park a hundred or two hundred or three hundred feet away from the entrance to wherever you’re going – all the way at the far, empty corner of the lot where no one else is likely to park.