I think folks are overthinking this to some extent. It’s a minor accident, and where I live there is no obligation to report a minor accident to the insurance or the police (MA). There’s a dollar amount of damages below which it’s not required. I know it was $2500 but it may have changed.
Second, it isn’t like the police are going to dispatch CSI over this. They’ll take a report and if they believe that someone was in the wrong, they’ll issue a ticket (ie, failure to stop at a stop sign). I’ve absolutely had a statey tell me and the other guy “I’m just going to put what I saw in the report. The insurance companies decide who is at fault.”
And that’s the takeaway. Absent something compelling like a citation, the insurance cos will decide fault. Let them file a claim if they want. You can too (or not). The insurance will work it out. You may be declared at fault. Or not.
You know that good old saying that if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all? I suggest you heed it. There’s no need to swipe at others like this. Don’t do it again.
The trauma is over the false accusation of the past, the subsequent 6+ months of our lives spent fighting a false charge, the money spent, the cops in our house, trying to prove innocence and that my wife wasn’t even on a road in question to people that didn’t want to hear it, losing an insurance claim over a wreck that never happened, trying to find an attorney to fight for us when they just wanted to do plea deals and one wanted to push us into a weird lie detector test, losing money as self-employed people to jump into various meetings around the matter, while facing up to a year in jail and a $10,000 fine. If that doesn’t bother you, cool. But when you have no real experience in the system and with car accidents other than that rude introduction, it doesn’t make a person trust any of this. I’m glad you’ve never had that happen, but that’s what was being referenced, not this little wreck. This little wreck brought all of that up though, worried about what a person is going to claim now because people are often opportunists, and sometimes things just go terribly out of literally nowhere around a wreck that you were never even on the road for. Take care of yourself and I hope you have a better day since reading my post made you need to react so emotionally.
