This is not the biggest problem in the grand scheme of things, but it is annoying. Our son is a college freshman in North Carolina. He lent his car to a school friend (we are not fans of the car lending, but being a designated driver is part of fraternity pledging at their university. Those who have cars share with those who don’t so that all can participate in the duties). While his friend was driving, another car backed into the front of my son’s car. The car is drivable, but there is about $1000 worth of damage. Our son’s friend collected the drivers license and phone number of the other driver, but did not get the insurance information and there was no police report filed. The other driver resides in the local area and is also a student but not at the same university.
You can guess the rest - the other driver is now avoiding our son’s calls. Our son has gotten estimates and reached out to him several times. He responds occasionally but there is no movement made on his part to actually take any action. It’s now been several weeks since the incident.
What are our options at this point? Can a police report even be filed? Is it worth it to take him to small claims court? I am skeptical that we will recover anything at this point, but our son still wants to believe that life can be fair and doesn’t want to let this guy off scot free.
Call your insurance company and see how they can help. Why didn’t your son’s friend file a police report, I believe both sides are suppose to file. He should file now.
If you call our insurance company, and they pay for it, it may very well count against your rates. Just be aware of that. My son was “clipped” by a big truck at an intersection, and don’t realize the damage until he got home. we wound up paying about 3K out of pocket to avoid insurance going up. This same son had a very low speed collision as a new driver. Our insurance went up significantly because of the relativley minor (less than 3K total iirc claim).
Thanks for the comments - there are all kinds of ways I wish our son’s friend had handled this differently! I think he just didn’t know what to do. We certainly have used this as a teaching experience regarding the need to get police reports and full insurance information. And we agree that we would rather not go through our own insurance - the $1000 cost against the $500 deductible doesn’t seem worth the risk of higher rates.
It seems that the other driver would be insured. You ought to be able to look him up through the license number. If he is young, he probably doesn’t know what to do. (Once, when H was a student, another student hit him. Problem was, she was afraid to tell her mom, but eventually the truth came out and her insurance had to pay. ) If the guy was at fault (any witnesses?) his insurance should pay. If the guy at fault is also a student, he is probably on his parents’ insurance. He may be delaying telling his parents about it.
@Pizzagirl “Police reports should be filed regardless of personal injury.”
To me this sounded like a parking lot incident (backed in to). Police don’t respond to private property unless there are injuries or a fight. However this is now hit & run. The other driver has now refused to give insurance information as required.
@1214 is right. It sounds like an incident that is going to make your sons rates soar. If an insurance company finds out many people have access to his car they might cancel him altogether.
I keep $1000 deductible on my cars anyway. That would be paid out of my sons pocket if he let someone else drive his car. If the other driver is at fault and found of course you pay no deductible and his insurance pays for it all. The rule of thumb is to insure only what you can’t easily afford to pay yourself. My son (18) and his Toyota only cost an additional $76 a month on my insurance. I bet insuring that first $1000 is costing you a lot.
Things are often different depending on the state/area you are in. In many places, a police report is not required, but they will come out if you ask them to. In this case, you may want to try to file one after the fact. The other driver could always say that your car rear ended his. With no police report and no witnesses, your insurance may be on the hook for damages to the other vehicle. Another thing to consider… is the other driver of your vehicle listed on an insurance policy? Either his own or his parents? If not, and this claim ends up with your insurance company, you may find that they add him as a driver on your policy and deduct the appropriate premium from any check you may receive.
Hm, I don’t know how to look up his insurance using his license number – but in the process of trying, I found out that he has about 8 misdemeanor and 2 felony court records. So, odds of recovering anything from him are probably even slimmer than I thought. The question is whether it’s too late to report anything. Guess we’ll find out.
I have to say that this fraternity rule that you must lend your car is one that I would object to if it were my kid. I hope you have a high liability limit on the policy when you have many others whom you don’t know driving your car.
Your insurance company may be able to look him up and check his coverage with his license number. I had somebody back into my car recently, and I did have his insurance, but my insurance company had access to a pretty good network of info and were able to confirm his coverage (with a different company). You could call them without filing a claim - mine was actually very helpful in figuring out what to do, and I did get all the repairs paid for by the other driver’s insurance.
By the way, I called the police to file a report and they said they don’t come or take the report if there’s no injury. It must just vary by locale.
There are a lot of generalizations made in this thread. In many jurisdictions you are obligated to report accidents such as this to the police if the damage exceeds a certain threshold, such as $1,000, and they will respond. No bodily injury is needed. Having a “not at fault accident” won’t necessarily make your rates go up. Your insurance company has ways of determining whether a driver is insured that you may not have access to. Do not get the car repaired and then decide it costs more than you expected and report it to your insurer. If the estimate is more than you are willing to pay yourself report it to your insurer first.
@OspreyCV22 , I agree and I think we may have already gone to $1000 deductible for him, in which case it makes even less sense to try and go through our insurance.
and @alwaysamom, the fraternity doesn’t insist that the pledges share cars (and in fact I think some of the brothers lend their own cars for the purpose). It’s more an informal arrangement. If you don’t share your car, it just means you have to take that many more driving shifts. When we first found out about the whole designated driver thing, it seemed like a relatively harmless and maybe even positive idea - who can object to a designated driver program? And as a pledging ritual, it seems much better than most of the fraternity rites you hear about. But obviously it has its downsides that we hadn’t thought through. In any case there is now a no lending policy on our DS’s car.
Your insurance company should be able to look up the other guys insurance based on the info you have. Your rates will not go up unless they pay a claim, so do not be afraid to give them a call.
I would also be careful with this, not all insurance policies will cover guest drivers (mine does), but they can exclude it I believe, and given your son’s age they might have such an exclusion or might exclude drivers under 26 who borrow the car. If the damage is 1000 dollars, to be honest it may not be worth it. Your insurance should try and collect it from the other driver, but if the insurance on the car had collision, your own company would pay for the car and try to collect from the other person’s insurance, which may be difficult (and the other person may not even have insurance, the kid should have asked for his insurance card). You can file an accident report with your insurance company and give the information, but to be honest insurance companies would consider that an annoyance for that amount of money, and even if they didn’t raise your rates they might not be very happy and then if you have a major accident, may drop you.
You can always call the insurance agent and ask, too, they know the way the company’s think and will tell you if they think it is worth it. Like I said, I suspect given the other person’s behavior, that they may not even have insurance, and good luck getting blood out of a stone.
If your deductible is $1000 or more, there is likely little that can be gained by in involving insurance. The other driver has a history of not so stellar behavior, so it might be the case that he does not have insurance… Shop around for a new bumper. Places like Maaco, while loathed by some, can do a decent job for 1/3-1/2 of what the others charge.