What the OP is asking about is the right of subrogation.
It is the insurers right to pursue the party that caused the loss to the insured and recover funds paid in the claim.
nm I think I got my threads confused
In Sicily, I expect they would senda-da-boys round for a little chat…
what legal basis do they have for attaching a lien to the car? There is only an anonymous note with a license plate number. It could be fake, or mistaken.
Do they send a detective, or one of their own staff, to locate the car and inspect it for evidence?
I had a car totaled in a hit and run accident, in which my mom injured her knee. I wasn’t able to get a plate, so there was zero follow up from the police. I did, luckily, have a witness who backed me up on it being the other driver’s fault. (They turned left right in front of me.)
An officer came to the scene and took a report. He asked for my insurance info. While I was trying to get the virtual card on my phone, the officer said, don’t worry about it.
About a month later, I got a notice that my license would be suspended in 10 days because I had been in an injury accident and had failed to file an accident report with the DMV, and had failed to provide proof of insurance. I got it sorted out, but it was a little added stress that the officer could have helped me avoid.
So, long story long, one thing that could happen depending on your state, is to report the accident to DMV. Then DMV, depending on the state, will send out a similar notice, and the owner of the vehicle will need to file a report and give proof of insurance.
I don’t really know how that worked. The agent told me that they’d put the lien on the car immediately while they waited for a response to their contact attempts. No way they went out and verified anything.
Unless the car was repaired quickly and outside of insurance, the evidence of an accident may be on the vehicle. It might be a scrape or a dent. They would measure the height and shape and compare it with the other vehicle. Thios would be done by your insurance company, if they paid on the collision or the police. Usually that would be enough for the other insurance company to accept liability.
The owner may provide proof of the damage being there before the incident or other reasons for the damage being on the vehicle.
Stranger
Where I live, no way are the police going to do this, with a no-injury crash.
In another, smaller city, my partner’s car got totaled while it was parked on the street. It was pushed up over the curb and into a tree, and a couple other cars had been hit, too.
An officer came to the door at 2 a.m. and asked, “did you own a white Acura?” They had us come out to look at the debris strewn down the street to see if we could spot anything that wasn’t from our car. They were doing that because close by and around the same time that someone reported the crashes on our street, a drunk driver was reported in a store parking lot with a very damaged truck. They were hoping to find something from his car at the crash site that could be matched up with damage to his truck. All that was because he hit multiple vehicles, didn’t hang around, and was clearly drunk when it happened.
If all someone’s done is hit one parked car and leave the scene, I don’t think there would be a lot of follow up by the police in a lot of bigger cities.
Where I live, you can still do a counter report.
Do you mean giving a report at a station? I’m not saying they won’t take a report. I’m saying they won’t be doing any follow-up or detective work to find the person, possibly even if you have the other driver’s name and address. If your insurance company doesn’t do it, it probably won’t get done.
In the crash where I got the DMV notice, I had filed a police report. There was a separate requirement to file a report with DMV in crashes that involved injuries or certain levels of property damage.
Went through the process once myself. Six months is about right.
They have now done one better: on the eve of a great road trip across the USA I decided to make a quick check of my CC to make sure I had the rental insurance coverage.
Imagine my surprise when I spoke with customer service reps for three different platinum cards I have from various banks and they all informed me that the rental insurance feature had been quietly discontinued a few years back. Surely they must have notified me, in ant-sized print on a piece of tissue paper that was probably camouflaged as junk mail.
Apparently this is a cost savings measure that has been working its way through the industry.
After all that, I was quite distressed, and I called my auto insurer to see if it would be possible to buy rental coverage at a decent rate–the lady was so happy to tell me that my auto policy already covers me in any rental car. That was awesome, and so was the journey.
tl;dr: don’t assume you have still have rental coverage from your CC…check before you rely on it.
Thanks for the clarification. I had someone hit me in a parking lot and fled in Pasadena. I had photos of the vehicle but it only had a paper place. The police refused to take the report and I had to insist since my wife was hurt. They told me it was an insurance matter and not a police matter and I had to inform them that the UMBI will not kick in without one. Reluctantly, they sent someone.
When I was an adjuster, if my policy holder had a plate but had no comp/collision or uninsured motorist, I would still attempt to get info on the other party for them. I am sure this is not the norm.
The one time I tried to use the rental car coverage provided by my credit card, they found the flimsiest, stupidest loophole imaginable to wash their hands of the whole thing. And it still took them a month or more to get to that decision.
Out of desperation, I called my insurance agent, who like your situation, said “well of course we cover rental cars.” Like I had asked if they breathe oxygen or something. So they covered me immediately.
A few months later, the rental firm came back and wanted me to pay for loss of use* and diminished value. I called my agent and she said “I can make that go away” which as far as I know, she did.
*Rental firms will often ask for the driver to pay the full rental cost for every day the car is in the shop. Apparently the counter to that is that my insurance company would agree to pay it, on the condition that the rental company would provide full documentation of the disposition of their fleet on the days in question. You know, so they could show that the wrecked car being out of service made them turn away a potential customer. I gather that this is something the rental company people are very loathe to provide, so that’s almost always the end of it.
I doubt that. Trespassing is one of those crimes where either the person has been specifically warned off before, or they jumped a fence, etc.
Say you live on a corner, like we do, and someone cuts the corner and walks across your lawn. Go ahead- call the police. They will get a big laugh about it down at the station.
Right, and it is not the job of the police to get involved in your civil issues. Yes, hit and run is a crime, but unless someone is injured or its a drunk driver, its pretty low level.
Well, you can “doubt” all you want but stepping onto someone’s private property without permission is definitionally trespassing. Again, there are specific circumstances where this is a allowable (taking a direct path from the street to front door to contact the resident, a utility worker or civil servant performing their job, an easement to access other property or throughway cut off by the property line), but entering someone’s property just to perform an unannounced investigation or collect evidence without permission is trespassing. Pictures of something visible from the sidewalk, accessing a trashcan at the curb, and other information gathering that is done from outside the property line and without intrusive methods is fair game.
A car accident on public streets is not just a ‘civil issue’. The police enforce laws and regulate the behavior of drivers as part of their recognized duties, and part of their charter is to investigate accidents and traffic violations that occur in public thoroughfares.
Stranger
Is Trespassing a Crime? | Nolo.
Warning or Notice Required?
In many states, laws require that a warning or notice be posted or delivered before a person can be guilty of trespassing. A property owner can do this by directly telling a trespasser to leave the premises. Or, in many states, there are other ways to provide notice that property is off limits. For example, a sign saying “No Trespassing,” a fence around the property, or a locked door to the property will do the job.
While true, the police have just so much staffing. They are allowed to pick and choose what crimes they investigate, and a non-injury accident is pretty low on that scale, when nigh every police dept has a large stack of felony warrants waiting to be served.
There seems to be an incongruity lurking here. The cops won’t investigate a hit-and-run with property damage but the will arrest me for at best 3rd degree trespassing for taking a picture of that hit-and-run car from their driveway? Will they at least cite the driver as long as they’re there putting me in handcuffs?
If you collect information that could only be obtained by trespassing on property, it can both put into question the admissibility and subject you to possible criminal and civil action. If you decide to do that anyway, so be it, but there can be adverse consequences, especially if the property owner decides to pursue some kind of punitive civil action just to harass you.
Stranger
That’s going to depend a lot on specifics - not only the jurisdiction but was the driveway fenced and did the person have to open a gate, at what point does the driveway turn into my backyard and probably a lot of other things.
Sure, the police aren’t going to send someone right out if I call and say someone cut across my front yard They probably aren’t going to send someone right out if I call and say someone is trespassing in my backyard either. Doesn’t mean they won’t charge someone with trespassing if they get a call about an attempted burglary and find someone in my backyard.