I need some advice on what to do in this situation.
A few days ago I was in a car-bicycle accident. I was riding my bike and a car turned right in front of me. I tried to stop and steer out of the way, but ended up hitting the car. The paramedics and police came; I turned down an ambulance and about a dozen offers for a ride home (including from the paramedics and police). I got the info for submitting an insurance claim. So minus a couple minor but nagging injuries and the delay in getting my bike fixed, things should be not be too bad, right?
Well, obviously there’s a wrinkle in this, otherwise I wouldn’t be posting here. It turns out the driver of the car had an expired license. Her husband has insurance on the vehicle and she had permission to drive it. From what I can tell (I asked in this GQ thread) their insurance company should pay. The problem is, how quickly will they pay? Will they just pay up without demur, or are they likely to contest things and make things difficult?
The damage is not great. About $600 for various physical things (bike repair, glasses, new helmet) and, based on a similar accident I had a few years ago, about $800 in pain and suffering. The other party (actually a family friend) says he may be able to scrape up about $1000 if I don’t make a claim.
So my question is, should I make a claim or accept their offer?
Yeah, I don’t understand who the family friend is.
Absolutely make a claim. I can’t think of any reason not to. You were not the cause of the accident and the fact that driver doesn’t bother it comply with the law doesn’t mean that you should let them off the hook.
Sure, an insurance company will want some information and will probably want to verify the events, that only makes sense. I’ve never had a claim take very long, especially one as cheap as this.
My questions is, who is more likely to pay you the money that you are owed? The insurance company, for whom this is chump change, or the illegal driver who thinks she might be able to scrape together some of the money?
So, do you actually have pain and suffering? Are you now afraid to ride your bike? Having horrific nightmares of your accident? I mean, I get it: that’s a legitimate claim to be made even without those things, but if I were in your shoes, I’d be happy they were offering me more than my actual cost ($600), take that, and call it a day. In fact, if they had only offered just to cover my costs, I’d have taken that, too.
While you’re thinking about it, write to the insurer saying what happened, that you are negotiating a private settlement, but reserve the right to make a claim later.
The OP used the phrase “minor but nagging”, which suggest that his/her injuries may have caused him/her to miss some time from work or other activities. So there might well be a quantifiable cost to it; when Typo Knig’s car was totaled, we added up the approximate value of time lost from work (for both of us, time spent car-hunting, dealing with retrieving belongings from the car etc.) and included that in our claim.
Is there any chance that the injuries might have led to some permanent, if non-life-, problems? Or that they might have aggravated existing issues?
Anyway - those are all considerations in deciding whether to pursue a higher claim amount vs. accepting the thousand dollars.
For you specifically: is it worth a possible delay (even if only a few weeks) in payout, to go after the possible higher figure from insurance? Depending on how injured you were, it might or might not be.
I saw Eva Luna’s post in the other thread and was actually surprised, because my first thought is that your insurance coverage requires that you only lend the car to people who are legal to drive. It may depend on the company but I’d say there’s a decent chance that in your case, the insurer might decline to pay, and/or drop the husband from the policy.
I know there are some Dopers who are insurance adjusters, it’d be neat if one of them popped in with better knowledge.
The other party wants to avoid a claim against their policy because their rates will go up. They are friends your friends, you don’t want them suffer needlessly because of accident. If you are sure that you haven’t suffered much more than $1000, take it without hestitation. Only take your actual damages if they are less than $1000. But do not sign anything like a waiver. Sign a receipt that has nothing but the amount if they request something. You want to keep your options open if next week one of your limbs falls off.
Sorry, I guess I wasn’t clear in the OP. The “friend” was a friend of the people who owned the car. They’re all total strangers to me.
And I shouldn’t have used the word “nagging”. The accident was only 3 days ago and I’m healing as well as can be expected. Just not fast enough for me. And I’m fairly certain there’s no unknown injuries, nor am I worried about riding in the future. I haven’t yet, but that’s only because my bike will take a little while to get fixed. They have to order a new fork.
I was in a very similar accident several years ago and the insurance company then paid me about $800 for pain and suffering on top of the damages. Whether I can get that this time, I don’t know. The one difference was that in the earlier accident, I let myself be taken to the hospital for an Xray just in case I had a broken leg. This time I refused that.[sup]1[/sup]
And the other party is worried about losing their coverage. I don’t know if they would or not.
[sup]1[/sup] In fact, I walked home, a distance of about a mile. As I said in the OP, I turned down about a dozen offers of a ride. My walking was not any kind of macho thing or anything like that. It’s that one of my injuries was a strain (I think that’s the right term) to my left thigh. If I sat around on it, it would just stiffen up. I figured a walk would keep it loose. It worked pretty well, although it still tightens up if I sit around too long.
I think I’d take the cash and avoid the insurance company. Also, if at all possible, I’d attempt to take the check, thank them and walk away. That is, I would try to stay away from signing anything that would prevent me from suing them (or their making an insurance claim) if I’d wind up with something else more serious happening. Whether it’s that the bike fork is discontinued and you have to get a new bike or the pain in your leg is something more serious that turns out to need surgery.
If they ask you to sign something, then it’s up to you what you want to do. Are you okay with taking the cash and signing off on it. Maybe you want a lawyer to look over it*, maybe you want to just take a pass and see what happens if you just make an insurance claim. Maybe they’ll be open to you saying “Look, I’m really not planning to ask for anything else, but I have to have the option available to me if my leg gets worse so I’d rather not sign this without letting a lawyer look at it” They might just let it go.
*Your insurance agent might be willing to help you out here for free. That is, they might have a lawyer that they can have look it on their dime. Especially if it means settling everything more or less on your own and not involving them other then this one thing…BTW, I’m talking about homeowners/auto insurance here.
Well it sounds like it’s just a decision of whether the $1000 covers your damages. If they pay it, why would you pursue an insurance claim? If they don’t pay right away, contact their insurance company.
If it was me I wouldn’t wait more than 24 hours for them to pay up. If they want to avoid the consequences of the insurance claim they should pay up in full immediately. If they stalled I’d be suspicious of their intentions.