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Jesus, Sofaspud! 3 poles? Are you sure the guy’s not dead?
Driver of the car owes your damages. Unless as you mentioned earlier, it was some kind of unforseeable medical condition. But even diabetic siezures don’t always excuse a driver, not even usually. If a driver has a known physical condition which could suddenly impair his ability to drive, it’s his responsibility to make sure it doesn’t cause problems. If this is how he found out he is diabetic, epileptic, prone to strokes, etc then he’s off and you need to get out the hammer & nails. Otherwise…well, you get the point.
The fence is covered by your homeowner’s policy. You will be paid the cost to repair the fence minus your deductible, which would probably work out to the cost of the lumber and you can do the labor and not have to cough up the deductible. But wait, it gets better! If I recall correctly many insurers in Washington went to a time-depreciation methodology for determining what to pay for fences and other structures that are prone to deterioration over a realatively short period of time. They often do a similar thing with roofs (rooves?) for the same reason. So even though it’s covered, you still might not have enough of a claim to exceed your deductible. And yes, for reasons that needn’t be gone into here, your homeowner’s insurer may drop you, and then you’ll need a blessing from the pope to get coverage from anyone else. File this claim only as a last resort.
Your best bet is to go to the cop shop and request a copy of the police report. If he’s got insurance this document is your fast track to getting your stuff fixed. As long as he was clearly negligent the claim rep is very likely to tell you to get a couple repair estimates, fax 'em in and then your check will arrive shortly. And the payment is not likely to have any of that depreciation stuff either…for reasons that needn’t be gone into here. 
Dissenting view on the file-a-homeowner’s-claim-and-lose-your-coverage meme.
I’ve filed 3 HO claims in my life.
#1 was damage from an ice storm, which tore up part of a roof;
#2 was from a drunk driver who parked his pickup in my living room on top of my wife;
#3 was ths past winter, when my freezer caught fire.
All 3 were with State Farm. 1 and 2 were in Indiana; 3 was in North Carolina. At no time was there ever a peep about canceling me. BTW, they subrogated the hell out of #2, which is what will happen if the OP files for fence damage on his/her HO policy. Joe Leadfoot is 100% liable.
My office roadside mailbox was taken out in a car accident (driver dozed off). It took a few months, but the driver’s insurance paid for replacement. (Pennsylvania)
Yup, that was the first thing we checked. Turns out, it was a SHE, not a HE, but either way… It was indeed 3 poles. The car was a late-model sports/luxury car of some sort, a Pontiac I believe; I wasn’t allowed to go around to the back end to verify due to the wires dangling down from the fallen telephone pole (cops blockaded the whole block). I have a picture of the front end though. Both airbags had deployed, which I think means she had to have been doing more than 35 or so. Considering that she plowed through 3 poles, I’m pretty sure it was more like 50 or so. The telephone pole was snapped off above the base; I’m no crime scene investigator, but my guess would be that she hit the curb hard enough to launch the front end into the air, which I think means she was going a wee bit too fast :).
The driver was taken off in an ambulance before the cops knocked on our door. I don’t know HOW my wife and I slept through it, honestly, except to say that we live on a busy street (hence the privacy fence) and we hear sirens and such all the time.
At any rate, we STILL haven’t seen the police report. My wife is chasing that down today.
Depends on the make and model of the car, but front airbag deployment thresholds are in general between about 6 and 15 mph.
edited to add don’t get me wrong, I agree with she was hauling ass. I was just trying to fight a little ignorance about air bag deployments.
I based my statement on the fact that I’ve been in a few fender-benders at around 20 MPH and the airbags did not deploy (on either of our cars in all cases). I’ve even been in one where I T-boned a truck at 30 (they pulled out in front of me, I wasn’t able to stop in time, cops said it wasn’t my fault, thankfully).
After that worst one (the T-bone) I asked the mechanic why my airbag hadn’t deployed - was it defective? He said Naw, these things don’t go off unless it’s a SERIOUS accident, like 35 MPH or more.
But he’s a crotchety old bastard and may very well not know the details (or care, for that matter ;)). He sure fixes cars well, though, and pretty cheaply, too. I like him.
Here’s what Wiki has to say about speed and airbag deployment:
Air bags are typically designed to deploy in frontal and near-frontal collisions, which are comparable to hitting a solid barrier at approximately 8 to 14 miles per hour (mph) (13 to 23 km/h). Roughly speaking, a 14 mph (23 km/h) barrier collision is equivalent to striking a parked car of similar size across the full front of each vehicle at about 28 mph (45 km/h).
From here: Airbag - Wikipedia
Again, it depends on the car and model, but most systems measure the energy that is transmitted into the car. What and how you hit is as important as the speed.
When Volvo first came out with airbags systems, we published a note in the owner’s manual that a crash of 12 MPH would deploy the bags. We got sued by a customer who hit a sapling at about 20 MPH and was pissed because his bag did not go off. This case went to trial. He lost when it was pointed out that he was not injured, and the airbag was not necessary in that particular crash. Also it was pointed out that the criteria was for a hit against a solid object not a sapling tree.
In the case of the driver outside your house, I suspect that the hit on the curb triggered the deployment.
IIRC the federal standard for airbags is a barrier crash at 30 MPH, so the threshold has to be below that number.
So the driver? Is a 50 year old woman who did not have a license. She’s got a history of driving without a license, in fact. She does NOT have insurance, but it wasn’t her car.
The car? Had insurance. But the owner (and presumably, primary operator) wasn’t on scene at all.
We’re still waiting for the actual police report. My wife talked to an officer at the station who was able to look up the report; it just hasn’t been finalized yet (?) and we have to wait for Records to send it to us.
Sweet thraggling son of a monkey, what the heck does THIS mean now? I can just SEE it: the owner’s insurance co. is gonna say “Not our fault, our boy wasn’t driving; go piss up a rope.” The driver is obviously irresponsible as all hell if she’s got a history of driving without a license; at her age chances are even if I do take her to court, I’m not going to be able to get anything out of her.
Man, why couldn’t she have swerved the OTHER way? My neighbor’s got a chain-link fence, I would’ve helped him fix it. Aarrrgh.
Still file a claim with the owner’s insurance company. Then sue both the owner and the driver.
Even if you don’t collect, you will at least have the satisfaction of causing them a shit load of trouble.
The car owner is liable. File the claim on your homeowners policy and our carrier will bleed turnips to subrogate the case. You need not worry.
The car owner will have to find a new carrier, however, unless the car was stolen. : doh! :
IANAL, but this seems counterproductive. Assuming the auto insurance refuses the claim (which seems unlikely), I think the choice is between suing the driver, the vehicle owner and the auto insurance company, or submitting a claim to the the homeowners policy. I don’t see how doing both is going to be advantageous.
The obvious choice, in my mind, is to submit a claim to the homeowners insurance company and let them sort out where the final compensation comes from. That’s part of the reason you buy insurance. The idea that they may raise the premiums, or cancel the policy, is just speculation.
For some companies, weather-related losses are generally not counted as “chargeable” when it comes to deciding to nonrenew. The car one, I don’t know. Could be that the claim was subrogable so they didn’t count it, or you may have been with the company for a while and earned a break. The freezer…you may have used a silver bullet on that one. And then, not all companies have the same underwriting guidelines in all places.
The claims that will do you in are reasonably preventable: burglaries, dripping bleach all over all of the carpets in the house (don’t even ask, that one still makes me mad), old roof leaks and destroys walls, etc.
But you’re right, that meme did warrant clarification.
I had two burglaries in about six weeks and I wasn’t cancelled. Don’t recall if it affected my rates, it was a couple decades back.
Only maybe, really.
In order for the owner to be liable we’d have to prove he gave the keys to a known wacky driver (negligent entrustment) and had a pretty good idea she could do some damage. Maybe not a long shot in this case, but not a slam-dunk either. Also, some insurance companies will not cover a loss unless the named insured is driving. And if her record is as bad as all that, even more reputable companies would have her excluded from coverage as a condition of continued coverage on the vehicle. Lotsa unknowns.
Generally speaking, automobile insurance “follows the vehicle”. Unless the car had been reported stolen, the insurance company is liable for all claims. Certainly they may cancel the policy because their insured party is an idiot for lending his car, but they are liable.
Again, this is a generalization based on standard universal auto policies across state lines. Undoubtedly there are some exceptions.
Hey! Me too! They wouldn’t cover my $400 necklace because me ‘n’ Mr. K weren’t married, but they covered all kinds of weird shit and didn’t drop us.
Insurance follows the vehicle, but coverage for a claim will still be denied if the operator of the car is not an INSURED as defined by the policy.
I lived alone and, being in long haul trucking, I was gone a lot. My brother warned me that burglars often return for a second hit, figuring they’ll get all the new stuff that the insurance replaced. He was kinda’ right. It was different people the second time (one of my tenants). The cops were useless, even though I had strong suspicions and even some evidence pointing to the culprits.
Funny you should mention the necklace, I had a dress watch, it was a thin Longines, w/ four diamond chips. I had purchased it overseas about a dozen years earlier for around 3 to 4 hundred dollars. My insurance company had a jewelry appraiser contact me and, after asking me several questions, she approved a thousand bucks, the “valuables” limit on my policy, to replace it. I was quite surprised that they actually appreciated the watch.