I was leaving work and I approached a roundabout in the right lane. I almost entered the roundabout, but I hesitated and stopped to let a car go that was already in the roundabout. I then continued to enter the roundabout, however, the car to my left entered the roundabout just before me and cut me off to make the first exit. He wrapped the backside of his car around the front of mine. It was a very low speed crash. According to the sign before entering the roundabout the left lane did not have permission to take the first exit. We exit the roundabout pull over and start talking. I told him I was not worried about it, it was just a scuff on my car on the front bumper. He told me he didn't want to get cops involved because he doesn't like cops. However, it was a lease car through his place of work and his work required him to submit a claim as part of the lease policy. I gave him my phone number in any case as a polite gesture in case he needed to contact me, however, I did not admit fault and no former police report was filed. I walked because my car isn't very nice and quite honestly you can't even tell the difference from before. Now I've received two letters from his insurance company saying I owe them 8,000 dollars. They want me to contact my insurance company so they can sort it out. They don't even know it's me who caused the wreck or not. So I'm wondering how I should handle this situation. Do I ignore the letters or do I contact my insurance company? It's been a few months since this happened. They've only threatened me and there hasn't been a formal lawsuit. Advice would be greatly appreciated!
Guy doesn't want to call police after wreck, now his insurance company is trying to get me to pay for damages.
byu/No_Practice4878 inInsurance
Posted by No_Practice4878
3 Comments
It might help to post a a scrubbed (no address for your relative privacy) set of photos showing the top down view of the round about from google maps and the street view of the sign directing traffic. This could be word vs word, or some shared fault between both parties based on what I could parse from your post.
***PRACTICAL ADVICE:*** Reply to the letters with your own insurance information so that they can pursue this through your own policy. This will trigger your own company to open a claim and investigate. If this is word vs word, your own insurance company will take your side and deny liability. Potentially, this could go to binding arbitration, but doesn’t sound like either carrier is going to have much in the way of evidence.
Your first mistake was not making a police report. Second was no dash cam. He is going to say he was in the circle first and you hit him. You have no defense. Call your insurance company now.
Id go and have a visit with my policy agent. If I was your agent I would tell you to ignore the letters because they have ZERO proof to go off of, you didn’t admit fault. No police report, who even are you.. they don’t know, and they can’t prove it.