Let’s say I’m the victim of a hit-and-run. The damage would be paid for by my insurance under uninsured motorist I believe. But what if I had a dashcam and was able to get a license plate? What would my insurance do because THEY don’t want to have to pay. What if more than this, the police were able to identify the driver? Now with a name what would my insurance do to recoup their losses?
I assume they’ll find out if the driver has liability insurance and sue for it.
They’d contact the police, get a police report and then find out if they are insured. This should be part of the report. If they aren’t insured they will sue them personally/get restitution through the courts
But how? Contact the driver directly and ask for their insurance info? Or just go straight to suing and make the driver come to them saying they’re covered?
They’ll get the police involved. It is a crime. Has to be the police.
They’ll give the police the evidence you have and let them go from there.
Maybe they could also bring a civil case on their own but it is easier to win a civil case if a criminal case has been brought and the person lost. The insurance company would rather let that work be done by the state first.
They have their ways. I’m sure. They would most likely go directly to finding out their insurance company. If they’re not insured and they’re known. They get sued.
I’ll bet that insurance companies have a shared database of covered automobiles.
They will pay you first, if they can’t get at the offender. But if they then get info on the offender, they will track them down and sue them to recover what they paid. If the offender has insurance, the companies usually cooperate, because it’s cheaper for all of them if they aren’t constantly suing each other. If the driver doesn’t have insurance, they will sue if they think the driver has enough assets to be worth their effort.
They will also cooperate with the police. Hit & run is a crime, so there’s potentially criminal charges as well as civil liability.
I had almost this exact thing happen to me in Seattle, except instead of a dash cam, it was a witness who got the plate of the car that ran into my parked vehicle.
Because the witness did not leave their contact info, only a note with the car and plate details, the cops said there was nothing they could do. They refused to even come look.
The woman at my local insurance agent’s office on the other hand was wildly delighted. She said that I would intitally be paid under my uninsured motorist part of the policy, meaning that I had to pay my deductible. She said they would use the plate info to find the other car’s owner and harass them, and when my insurance company was eventually reimbursed, they would pay me the amount of my deductible.
In practice, what she said they did would be to contact the registered owner and ask for their insurance info. Simultaneously, they put a lien on the car such that it could not have its registration renewed until the debt was paid. The other driver (turned out to be the teen son of the owner) denied being in the area that night so the parent refused to pay. I don’t know what conversation happened around that but come renewal time, I got my deductible back.
The insurance agent was so delighted by this bit of petty revenge that she gave me the address of the other driver and then said, “do not go over there.” So I did, and got a picture of a damaged car with the exact match to my red paint on the fender. I sent them a copy but I don’t know if that made any difference or not.
Well, they will if police will cooperate. I got sideswiped in a hit & run few years ago and despite having the full license plate and description of the vehicle (no dashcam footage, though), the pertinent law enforcement agency essentially refused to investigate because it was a non-injury accident. I did get a case number that was linked to some hypothetical future investigation but they never, ever followed up. My insurance company basically paid out on the non-insured driver policy and (as far as I know) just ate the cost. Frankly, most hit & run drivers are probably uninsured anyway, and recovering money from them is like trying to phlebotomize a turnip.
You (and anybody else considering it) want to be very careful about doing something like this. If the vehicle was in plain view from the street or sidewalk it is fair game but if you even stepped on private property to get a good picture that is both legally trespass and potentially harassment.
Stranger
Your insurance provider will require you to file a police report to formalize the hit & run. Unless there’s some other circumstance besides your vehicle damage (injuries, government-owned property damage, suspect wanted for other crimes, media attention, boss intervention), don’t count on any followup from law enforcement. No watching any videos, no taking witness statements, no paint matching forensics.
In CA, most insurance carriers have access to the DMV pull. With the license plate, you could pull the registered owner. There are a few tools I used in the past when I was an adjuster. I would first run the plate, VIN, Driver’s name and address through the ISO claims database. It may give previous claims with some or all of the information. They may also use Carrier discovery through Lexis Nexsis, which may give the insurance company of the driver. If it is a federally registered commercial vehicle, I would run the VIN through SAFERWEB, which would provide the insurance information. The last play I have would to file an SR-1 with the state and have the state have the registered owner provide the information or face a fine/suspension. This usually is quicker than waiting on the police report, which can take weeks or months.
No doubt. Which is why, I’m sure, my agent said not to do that. But fortunately, the damage car was proudly parked right at the curb. I didn’t even get out of my car to get the photo.
in CA, I think you need that police report as well as evidence of an impact to your car for an uninsured motorist bodily injury claim. You sometimes need to insist that the police come to the scene to make a report as a report done at the station, after the fact, may not be as valuable as one that is made by the police. Uninsured motorist property damage, also known as deductible waiver, has the extra requirement that the person is identified and confirmed uninsured.
Unless you hopped a fence or something, the path to the front door of a house is open to the public and I doubt very much it would be considered trespassing or harassment. On the other hand, it is risky behavior if the owner is a psycho (and one never knows).
My parked car was hit by an intoxicated driver. I returned to my car after the guy was hauled off but the cops were still there. They gave me a report number right then and there.
My insurance company paid for the damage less the deductible which I paid. I filed a separate claim with the State of California since I was a crime victim. They would have reimbursed me from a fund if I wasn’t made whole but it turned out that the other guy had insurance and I got a check from them a few weeks later.
The Police have a limited budget. Yeah Hit & Run is a crime, but they dont have the resources. or for many small burglaries.
That depends greatly on the jurisdiction. Many are badly under-resourced. But not all.
My closest such tale was a few years ago I left a black rental SUV in the parking lot of my hotel overnight. When I pulled in rather late at night the adjacent vehicle was a company-owned white pickup truck with lockers on the back, logo on the door and yellow lights on the roof. Some sort of construction outfit. I wasn’t paying any great attention, but I noted that much.
Came out the next morning maybe an hour after dawn and that side rear quarter of my rental had been trashed by something that was tall and white. The adjacent space was empty. No note of course.
I had to dash for the airport, and of course the rental turn-in took an extra 45 minutes because of the damage. So I never had an opportunity to ask the hotel for any security footage. Both our vehicles were parked in an area and orientation that if the hotel had much in the way of cameras, the whole event & enough identifying information on the truck would likely have been seen.
Gaah!, what a PITA. My credit card’s rental insurance covered all the damage, but that claim process was deliberately designed to be so onerous as to make most mere mortals abandon it half-completed. So I ended up fronting the (grossly overpriced) repair money to the car rental company (one of the biggies) for about 6 months before the CC’s third party “cardholder benefit provider” finally coughed up the dough.
Here, the police probably won’t be interested unless there is injury to persons or third-party property, or speed cameras have recorded a speed offence taking place . In which case they will send the Registered Keeper of the car a form requiring him to state who was driving at the time the offence occurred. Refusal to answer is an offence in itself.
You can legitimately enter someone’s (non-posted) property via a normal or indicated direct route for the purpose of ringing the doorbell or delivering a package, and there are specific exceptions, of course, like meter readers doing their job and “compliance officers” inspecting property for adherence to civil codes but walking into someone’s driveway to take a close-up picture of their car is definitely illegal trespassing even if they did crash into you. Of course, @Pork_Rind didn’t have to even get out of his vehicle because the offending car was parked on the curb, and that is totally fair game.
Stranger