Hi looking for some advice.
My car broke down outside a petrol station, so I rolled it into a spot just outside the driveway on a local street as it was near my house, while I sorted out a plan to repair it and then sell it. Note that it was no longer insured but was still registered.
About two weeks later someone had crashed into it and drove off. Someone left a note on the car giving the registration details of the offender and said "saw an old fella in a ute crash into your car.. registration xxxx”.
- Incident happened last week of August or first week of September
- Reported to police 4 september.
- Waiting for investigation to identify the driver and for me to send a claim
- now is nearly 2-3 months since the incident and report to police, car been sitting there
The petrol station has CCTV cameras that cover where the car is parked. Additionally across the road was a Good Guys with another CCTV facing the street from the pick up area.
I only know the timeframe was one week, where it was not damaged and it was damaged. The police said he will have a look and go talk to the offender. He looked it up on the system and confirmed the rego given was a old man with a white Ute. But the person who left the note did not leave their own details. Police said he will go pay the man a visit but said "the old man must have not heard it happening".
Now I went to follow up on the report and they told us there’s not much they can do as the investigation police officer went on holiday with his kids and it is far too late to review CCTV footage. Additionally there is no witnesses as there was no contact number on the letter.
It’s been approximately a few months now since this.
So
1) What can I do about the police report? There was CCTV and the damages were more than 1k but they did not get someone to follow up. Feel that if they found the offender that I could make the insurance claim so much easier for not at fault. Seemed to take the issue very lightly too.
2) Should I get the car fixed or just sell for scrap? It is worth $3000-$4000 with repair costs $2-$3k not including the crash which will cost additional around $1k. Low km for 2003 car @160k and good condition. Will only sell for $200-400 for scrap.
@ely: Because once you give the footage to anyone, you lose control over it. Off the top of my head, say someone slipped on a very very visible puddle inside the petrol station while running in the pouring rain 3 weeks ago.
If your standard procedure is to keep CCTV footage for 2 weeks, you tell any ambulance chasing lawyer that you don't have footage and that you've no idea what they're talking about. That basically kills any even vexatious or frivolous case.
If the footage gets out and the lawyer gets that footage? They tie you up in court for weeks - which for a small business owner is not just unpalatable but could send them broke (again, one man operations especially), and extorts a settlement out of you.
Yes, potentially. The legal industry is kind of like the insurance industry - it's all about managing and minimising risk, and calculating risk/reward. There's no up-side in helping. There's very real and very possible downsides. And this isn't like jumping into a river to save someone - this is at most $1,000 for OP. That's it.