Hi guys, was driving today when a car in the lane to my right merged into my lane and collided into my car, swiped it and went back into their lane.
The driver kept driving and would not stop even though I flashed my lights, tried to go to the side of their car to tell them to stop during a red light but they drove off.
I have the number plates and dash cam footage.
What can I do, will the police be interested in this or should I only bother with insurance?
Thank you
Submit a report to police immediately and then go to your insurance.
Thats all that needs to be done on your end op.
The rest is irrelevant as your insurance will either help you or burn you.
Something similar happened to me a few years ago. I was driving to work on morning, and a car crossed into my lane and hit me. I flagged the car down with my lights and horn, but she kept on driving, and sped off.
I had registration and dash cam of the incident. I contacted my insurance company, and they advised me to report it to the police. I had to pay an excess.
Police would show up at her house and she managed to duck them for 2 months. Eventually they were able to get to her. They even saw the damage on her car, which was the paint scraped from my car during the collision. At first she said she wasn't the one driving (even though dashcam footage and my description of her matched), then she said she was driving but didn't remember any collision, then she remembered the collision but didn't remember me trying to flag her down.
Police kept coming to my house to get more statements from me, had to do a few statutory declarations, or to give me updates. In between that, police had lost my dash cam footage
Long story short, police made me go to court, as a witness, and my passenger also had to attend court with me. As expected, she refused to answer most of the questions posed by the judge. Eventually they fined her $600 for negligent driving and some loss of points. Turns out she had had previous infringements. I lost a lot of my time, over about 6 months, going back and forth with police, and had to take off two work days. And that's with dash cam, photos of the damage, passenger in the car as a secondary witness, license plate, description of the offending driver. Insurance company paid me back my excess.
Hopefully OP has an easier time of it.
Good story for OP on what to do next and what to expect
So you handed the police the original dashcam footage and not making a copy?
What can I do, will the police be interested in this or should I only bother with insurance?
You'll need to go to the police to try get the details of the vehicle owner before you go to insurance (unless you want to pay the excess!). Bonus if they get charged with hit-and-run.
and pray that the police have had their Maccas and are willing to help.
Last time this happned to me the cops said they would only relase driver details to the insurers.
That's exactly why I was saying "…try to get the details…". Sometimes they are just a-holes.
Thats all you can ask for really. It serves your primary purpose to identify them to the insurers to avoid paying excesses.
me the cops said they would only relase driver details to the insurers.
What percentage of those requests would you think are along the line of " Give me the address of the %^&$, and I'll go around and sort it out."?
That can worry them, especially when it's Mrs Primlibottom who was on her way to the tea-cake festival at the parish hall, and she wants to sort out Big Mo who clipped her during a right-hand turn.
I'd say post on OzBargain first
Then consider the law…. they wont care, but you can talk to them.
MS Paint diagram?
Excellent post, another 5/7 effort.
There's hardly any damage to my car, just my right side mirror was folded in (its foldable) and some scrape on the car paint on my right drivers door.
Surprising, since it was a loud collision.
Should I bother to go to insurance with this?
If I do make a claim, and I am able to get the details of the driver, so my claim would be at no fault, should I expect my premiums to increase anyway? Even if I do not need to pay excess.
Also, if I am allowed and if it would not affect my insurance claim, once I get the video off my sd card I can upload the video of the crash of you guys are curious.
This shouldn't impact your premiums, as they will end up following it with the drivers insurance company and charge them for any repairs or works on the car.
This is why you pay comprehensive insurance to let your insurer do the job for you. I would continue to report it and let your insurer do it. Idiots like these people need to held accountable no matter what, or they'll just keep driving around acting like king shit on the roads.
I'm planning to go to the cops tomorrow when I don't have work, bringing the dash cam footage with me for evidence to show them and filing a police report.
Will they bother to do anything about a hit and run?
I'm going anyway just so I can get the report for insurance, but it would be nice to know something will be done by the cops as well since its a hit and run.
Will they bother to do anything about a hit and run?
it depends on the cop and what kind of mood they are in, but there is no harm in trying.
it's hard to say, a lot of cops are lazy bastards only interested in revenue raising or cases where they don't have to do any real work, the kind that solve themselves, while others actually have some integrity and the desire to do their job.
In ACT there is an online form to be completed within 24hrs of any traffic accident, not sure if you have similar
I'd like to see the footage thanks :)
I had something similar, reported it to the police with the licence plate and video footage.
The insurance company said unless I had the actual details of who was sriving there was nothing they would do except treat it like a normal 'at fault' claim.
I bet if they thought I was ripping them off they would have investigated, but won't lift a finger to actually try to identify the person that did it.
Faultless means they can blame someone else, not just you can prove it wasn't you.
So even if you have comprehensive and someone does a hit and run on you, insurance would still say your at fault?
Read your pds, it usually states what they require for not-at-fault/no excess claim.
I got side-swiped by a fool entering the McDowall Roundabout as I was heading up towards the exit ramp to Old Northern Rd Northbound, and they just kept on zooming on, looked like they took off Rode Rd exit. All my RACQ comprehensive motor insurance required was a Police Report number to file it as not-at-fault, but I did have to pay the excess on my policy of course. They banged it up pretty badly in the rear left quarter near the wheel, but had two kids under 5 in the car and no one was hurt which was the more important thing.
Anywho, Ferny Grove police were OK to deal with, but not much they could do in my case without a plate or really any other details of the offending vehicle. Still, I'm certain it hasn't counted as an at-fault incident on my policy.
My wife had a fool merge lanes into her and leave a great big wheel print on the passenger door. Completely his fault. We only had 3rd party insurance. Guy tried claiming it was my wife's fault so I just pointed them at our insurance company with our version of events and our insurer wouldn't do anything because it clearly wasn't our fault. Guy's insurer kept hassling us saying it was our fault. I kept directing them back to my insurance co because if they were expecting a payout - they were only ever going to get it from our insurer (duh).
The a**hole never took accountability for his actions. He had comprehensive insurance and if he'd just said "my bad", he would have only paid his excess and both cars would have been fixed. But no…he paid his excess and got his car fixed. We got nothing. Car wasn't worth much anyway so we donated it to Kids Under Cover to auction off. Karma will get him in the end. It wasn't worth dragging it into court as judges generally go with an averages scenario and in a he said/she said case, they usually award each party to walk away, lick their wounds and bear their own costs (and pay their solicitors…who are the only real winners here).
So dashcams….ALWAYS have a dashcam.
yup. Even if you have video of the incident, unless you can give the insurance company WORKING contact details of the other party then you are out of luck.
so rego is not a working contact detail?
@zorodluffy: wasn't for me. So horsecrap about not be enough proof to say who was driving.
I think it was a ruse to get me to pay up, but I could be wrong.
@wallet72: i think it was a ruse.
I didnt get the ID of the driver that hit and run me, but when i went to the cops, the cops said they can force the owner of the vehicle to says who was driving at the time of the collision, and if they do not, then they would be charged.
And from that I can get a report ID which is then used for insurance so that you can do a no fault claim.
Post the footage on Dashcam Owners Australia Facebook page for all to comment and give you feedback.
should have performed a pit maneuver & citizen arrest?
One could argue it worked out for society.
jesus, report it straight away to the police. You should have called the non emergency number then and there. If the person was drunk they could have followed it up
What is the non emergency number btw?
131 444
edit: That might be QLD specific though, not sure.
Go directly to the Police first.
Do not go to Ozbargain first.
sorry but thats just wrong. The order that I did it was:
Whirlpool
Ozbargain
Police
Report to police, but don’t assume the driver is the owner of the vehicle. Police will need to do some investigative work and it could take some time. Furthermore, it may not be high on their priority list (similar incident and took weeks to get updates).
From my experience police aren't interested in taking action on hit and runs unless someone is badly injured.
I was knocked off my bike, the person stopped and as soon as they could see I got up and looked OK they drove off.
I got the rego - the police said they would facilitate contact but then it was a civil matter between me and them. They contacted the person who then came to their senses and contacted me and cooperated and we sorted it out
The police weren't interested in the hit and run part
Melbourne September 2006.
Wet rainy night, had a collision with a taxi. Taxi driver insist that it's my fault even though it was clearly his, taxi driver did not provide drivers license. Drove off with his customers.
Frozen in shock… 2hours later me go find police. Got a mouthful for not reporting immediately. Police do breath test. Police took pictures of my car, in the rain. Thank you policeman for your service. Police find taxi driver. Taxi driver finds me. Taxi driver apologies. Left the rest to insurance company. Taxi driver ran away again. Insurance company lost taxi driver. Police lost taxi driver. Insurance company paid the smashrepair. Case closed.
Lesson learned - Taxi driver good at running.
You have the registration and dash cam.
Submit a report to police immediately and then go to your insurance.
Hopefully the police will see a crime has happened and provide you with the owner's details.