Fun with a Fender Bender

I toyed with putting this in MPSIMS because I’m not really asking for advise, more what do you predict will happen. I know the mods are way over worked and way under paid so I thought I’d save them the trouble of moving it… plus they are all probably all still out trick or treating.

Anyway, last Friday my wife and son set out on a journey from Indy to Pittsburgh… they made it about 3 miles and while sitting waiting for a light to change… boom! they got rear ended. The guy driving the huge pickup was very nice and he didn’t argue blame at all. The cop came and made his report and stated there was no question on the fault.

BUT… there was one little thing. The truck the guy was driving was his friend’s… and it was his work truck (it had a bracket for the snow plow) he couldn’t find the insurance card.

My wife was in a 2004 Pontiac Mini Van with about 150k miles on it. It is still drive-able, but there is now a nice crease in the rear hatch, and the rear bumper is shot (one of the back up sensors fell out). The van is fully loaded, but I’ll admit it is probably worth only around $6k at best. The truck that hit her basically missed the bumper and hit the hatch full on, and then came down and knocked most of the bumper off. I doubt the hatch can be pounded out so it will probably be replaced… the full bumper and sensor replacement will also be needed. I’m pretty sure that even though the van is drive-able it will be totaled.

So we reported it to our insurance agent, and I’m not asking for advise because I’m planning on leaving this all up to him (after all, I’ve been paying him for the past 30 years or so.) He got in contact with the “buddy” who loaned our guy the truck and he claimed that his friend “barely tapped” my wife and there is no way it could be over $500 so he doesn’t want to involve his insurance. My agent also told me he is “a real jerk.” He thought he was a kid (relatively speaking) and has no clue and is probably scared that he wasn’t supposed to loan his work truck out and is probably now in deep doo doo if he reports it.

Since there was a police report filed both parties have to provide a statement from their insurance that they were covered at the time. If not the other party will have their license suspended. Ours has been filed… not sure about the other guy.

We’re getting estimates… which the jerk stated “was state law” that we had to get three… and my agent laughed at him and let him know one was all we needed. I’m not really concerned because this is sort of an “extra” vehicle for us and we don’t need it for daily commutes. I know our insurance will handle it but I’ll have to subtract my deductible and wait for it to get resolved.

The cop on the scene was great and I have his cell and he said he would be happy to testify if it came down to it. Just wondering what kind of a hassle this jerk will give us or if he will roll over when he finds out he has to try to find $6k out of pocket. I feel a little bad that it was his friend who was at fault, but he seemed like a reasonable family guy who probably assumed all was on the up and up and everything insured.

So, what kind of fun can we expect in the near future?

I should clarify… when I say it was the “buddy’s work truck” I don’t mean it was the buddy’s truck that he uses for work… it is a truck that the company that employs the buddy owns and he uses as part of his job.

That could complicate things. When I drove company vehicles, only qualified employees were covered. (California)

Do you have uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage? I’ve been in a somewhat similar situation where I was hit by a vehicle owned by a business being driven by one of the owner’s family members and so there was ambiguity as to whether the insurance would cover it. I ended up just getting the damage fixed under the UIM coverage and then they paid me back the (IIRC $500) deductible after they finally got that mess figured out a month or two later. I have no idea who ultimately ended up paying.

Usually the liability policies are required to be written in such a way that short of outright theft the policy still has to pay. So usually the situation is that if there’s an accident where someone other than an authorized driver was driving, the insurance company still has to pay the claim but will likely take some sort of action against the insured. In theory, that means for the OP it should be a straightforward liability claim, but sounds like pretty much everyone involved will be trying to deflect blame so that will likely make things take a while.

I would just tell my insurance guy that I want the vehicle fixed. He can deal with contacting the other insurance company, etc.

If you know who the other insurance company is, it easy call them and start a claim.
If you don’t call the company and inform them one of their vehicles hit you and could you have their insurance info?
At this point they will go whaaaaaa?
Your response is yes I have a police report and give them make, model, year and VIN
Idiot will probably get fired (for good reason)
Or you can just let your insurance company handle it under collision coverage (uninsured motorist is for bodily injury not physical damage)
The same thing will happen.

This. The guy who loaned the vehicle assigned to him by his employer to a buddy is in deep shit with his boss, but that’s not your problem.

Yeah, that’s what I thought too. This was a few years ago, but I only had UIM and liability on the car that got hit, so I assumed the thing I paid the deductible on was the UIM. Maybe that was just something weird my company did.

Since this got so much interest the first round I thought I should give an update. :stuck_out_tongue:

Here it is about 45 days later. My agent (for now) got in touch with the guy who owns the company and for some reason entertained his idea to settle this without involving his insurance. To make a long story short, we got two estimates… one open ended due to hidden damage for $2500 and another closed for $3300. We would also need a rental car for about 5-6 days. The retail for a van like ours is $5500 in good condition (which it was).

I refused to call the guy, but my wife decided to (against my advise). She handled commercial claims for 17 years and knows what she is doing. He offered to settle for $2000 or to buy the van for $4000. WOW… how could we resist. He then refused to give my wife his insurance info when she asked, but it is on the police report. We got that and the company has no record of him, but it may be under the company name which he refuses to supply.

Farmer’s is going to go ahead and pay me, less my deductible and then try to track down the insurance info. I sincerely hope his insurance drops his whole company after this. I’d love to figure out a way to get his license suspended as well since as far as we know his vehicle is uninsured.

Oh, and as I said my Agent is “for now.” Turns out he gave the asshole my work phone number and was just forwarding my e-mails to him which I had assumed were confidential correspondences between the two of us. I really like the guy, and have used him for 30 years, but this pisses me off beyond belief.