Insurance-wise what are the legalities of this almost crash?

mathie

Hi,

I was driving along from Harolds Cross to Rathfarnham yesterday. After a while the traffice was fine on my side (not many cars on the road and everyone doing 45 kmh or so). The other side was bumper to bumper.

So someone on the otherside flashes a car to let them out of a parking space. They drive onto the road without looking left.

I hit the brakes and do an A-Team style skid and miss her by literally 2 inches. I had to get out and check if we'd collided. She goes 'I'm sorry I wasn't looking'. I was furious :mad: I said 'Not looking causes accidents you know!' and drove off.

Now was this a schoolboy error?
Should I have got her details?
If my tyres are fuwbared (not sure how they're affected by such a skid) should I have claimed on her insurance?

Any opinions appreciated

For the record I'm a 28 year old male and she was about 50 or so.
M

fletch

Women! :rolleyes:

I would blame the person who flashed her to indicate that it was safe to pull out...then again, you obviously saw this & probably should have predicted her pulling out on top of you.....then again I wasn't there so don't know the full circumstances around what happened.
But I don't think you were to blame.

prospect

Don't think you are to blame either, she can't just pull out onto a road without looking...
The person who flashed her was pretty dumb also, but can't be blamed. You should NEVER trust someone else to make a judgement for you. If i am driving and joining a main road, and my passenger says, 'you are okay on this side' i will always check, and she should have checked before proceeding.
Count your self lucky you reacted well, and your breaks were working. And hopefully the ould wan learned her lesson.

mathie

fletch wrote:

Women! :rolleyes:

I would blame the person who flashed her to indicate that it was safe to pull out...then again, you obviously saw this & probably should have predicted her pulling out on top of you.....then again I wasn't there so don't know the full circumstances around what happened.
But I don't think you were to blame.

Yeah I (not being biased) was not to blame. It had occured to me that the person who flashed them out was partly to blame. I did see them flash and started to slow in case the idiot actually came out.

I stared and screeched in disbelief when she actually came onto the road without looking. Who does that?! (besides women drivers?)

fletch

mathie wrote:

If my tyres are fuwbared (not sure how they're affected by such a skid) should I have claimed on her insurance?

Very unlikely that your tyres would have been affected in anyway from a skid

fletch

mathie wrote:

Should I have got her details?

I would say, No. There was no accident & therefor no reason to exchange insurance particulars

Eoin

If my tyres are fuwbared (not sure how they're affected by such a skid) should I have claimed on her insurance?

OK, sounds you are in the right, but I doubt you would be able to claim off her insurance because you left a bit of rubber on the road avoiding a collision.

vector

fletch wrote:

I would say, No. There was no accident & therefor no reason to exchange insurance particulars

Yes, there was no accident, just a close slow-speed shave, the sort of thing that happens in car parks every day, just mentally assign blame to the other driver and continue with your business.

At best if you were a "member" then you could "have a word" with the "driver of the vehicle"

alias no.9

Happened to a friend of mine about 2 years ago, again a woman (funny that) was pulling out across a lane of backed up traffic, turning right without looking to her left. Sevral thousand euro worth of damage done. He insisted on claims going through insurance which resulted in threatning phonecalls from her husband. Eventually it was sorted with her fully at fault, but it took 18 months, meanwhile he was paying through the nose for insurance because of an unsettled claim.

Garibaldi

Very similar happened to me last year. I was smacked in the side in a hit'n'run. Amazingly, only soft tissue damage to me (by a bizarre chance, I had decided to wear the leathers that day), but the bike had over €5000 worth of damage done. Needless to say, myself and Hibernian are no longer on speaking terms.

seamus

Indeed you would have been in the right, and whoever flashed her may have also been taken as liable, but if the accident had occured then it would have been her who would foot at least 95% of the blame. Even if you flash someone on, you're not responsible for their driving.

Another one for you to mark in the big book of "warning signs to watch out for while driving".

Dades

mathie wrote:

Yeah I (not being biased) was not to blame. It had occured to me that the person who flashed them out was partly to blame. I did see them flash and started to slow in case the idiot actually came out.

Why would the driver who let her out be any way liable? Do you know that he was actually telling her it was safe, and not just flashing to let her know he was going to let her out of the space? I doubt that unless he was blind or you were speeding...

If I flash somebody to let them out of a space and they go and do something stupid you can be sure I wouldn't be taking the blame.

There's but one person at fault, but no victim - so be grateful for that!

Boggle

The person who flashed has nothing to answer for. You can't accept "signals" from other drivers and in the test the tester will fail you for it.

Dades

Flashers, of course, have been known to cause accidents...

DubTony

Here's a tip. Never wave, flash or direct anyone into traffic. Ever.
I remember a court case about 15 years ago where a judge found "the flasher" to be 25% responsible for the damage caused after the person he waved out caused an accident. He was in court as a witness and had been attacked by the defendants barrister who blamed him for the crash. (If you hadn't instructed my client to proceed there would have been no accident..... or some such guff) Don't know how his insurance company handled it - if at all. A driving instructor I know warns his students that they should never wave someone out, and I've heard that a tester can fail you for doing so (don't know how true that is)

By all means, leave a gap, but don't wave them out.

Tony

vector

The only hand signal you should use is the "thankyou wave" after the fact

If you want to let someone out use the flash, technically the flash /and the horn just indicates "your presence" you you were simply saying "hey, whatever you are doing, please note I am here"

Our man in Havana

The gardai won't get involved as there was no collision.

causal

DubTony wrote:

A driving instructor I know warns his students that they should never wave someone out, and I've heard that a tester can fail you for doing so (don't know how true that is)

Never signal to another user what to do. The only signals should be to indicate your intention e.g. hand signals to other road users if your indicators brake lights fail or whatever; or to be given to a Garda on point duty.
(EDIT: Oops, forgot the horn to signal your presence/danger.)

You won't fail the test for a hand-signal though, iirc it's a minor fault - so only if you do a few of them (or similar category faults) you will fail.

causal