I could use some advice from our motoring experts.
Driving out of our local supermarket, my car was hit by a car that reversed out of a parking bay as I was passing. The driver was very abusive and refused to complete a constat. I immediately contacted my insurers and sent them full details.
I am in no doubt that the accident was entirely the other driver's fault. The damage to my car is to the back edge of the front door and the front edge of the rear door - I was already half way past him when he hit me. His car did not appear to have sustained any damage.
My insurers now inform me that, based on the information now received from the other driver, they have decided that both parties were equally responsible and should pay half each.
As I see it, this is either laziness on the part of my insurers, or a cynical attempt to make additional profit by taking away my NCB.
What do you think?
You have reminded me of a great line from Flanders and Swan - "I lost both my Botticellis when they robbed my country place." Some of us have to get by with an entry-model Fiat! ;-)
I think you can do that. We did once, both of our Land Rovers were badly damaged in a hail storm a few years ago, repair quotes came to about 6k which I chose to take in cash and not repair them.
I thought this was a wind up, at least i hoped it was a wind up i can count the number of times i have used my horn on one hand, my driving instructor told me 50 years ago a good driver has no need to use his horn in fact the last time i actually used the car horn in anger was in the uk on my first and only visit in 4 years and i wasn't even off the hire car parking area the idiot in front decided he wanted to go backwards into a line of traffic without first checking behind so 5 minutes into the UK and an accident in the making. Being a motorcyclist gives you special powers you can spot the idiots AS most of them are on 4 wheels.When we came off the ferry in Dover after two weeks touring France on the motorcycle we always found the standard of driving absolutely abysmal from two finger salutes to language my mother never used
I thought this was all gone and forgotten, but like all SFN threads it has just drifted away from the original topic....... So if anyone is still interested, we just got the car back from the repairers. It is going to cost the other driver's insurance €800 to pay for a small dent in each of two doors, which is about one fifth of what I paid for the car. Thinking about it now, I would rather have had the money and live with the dents. That way I could get my motoring free on the basis of one bump a year, which is more than likely, knowing the way they drive around here!
Too right. I lived just outside Newmarket but within the breeding and training areas, about five minutes from the National Stud. My family lived on the main road to Epsom in SW London for many years. Horses, especially Arabs, have been part of most of my life. Well, apart from Desert Orchid who was retired to Newmarket and still went for runs on the jump training course until he was too old and I got to know him very well indeed. Anyway, pictures would be great, yours too as Catharine says.
Welcome to SFN Ken. When you get a minute to do your profile photo, any chance of some photos of your horses and the stud? Would love to see them! Enjoy SFN.
Are you deliberately presenting yourself as a parody of a horsey Englishman? I can see you'll get on really well withe the "natives" with their "communist past"--what's all that about? And who is Marie of Rodez?
Actually, laws on smoking are gradually changing. Smoking with children on board is now illegal or becoming so soon in almost all of Europe, there are proposals to stop drivers smoking in some countries and perhaps entirely in cars in time. Will people obey the law? Yes though, circumstances are many and varied. To refine those down so that a wasp buzzing/stinging the driver or an arachnophobic person losing control to such extremes as an unexpected gust of wind or part of an aircraft dropping off in front of the car, all have happened, would make it almost impossible.
But the whole thing is endlessly complicated....... What was the emotional state of the driver? Was he distracted by loud music, mobile phone, sat nav? Unfamiliar route? Argument with passenger? Alcohol? Illness? Drugs - prescription or otherwise? Smoking? (Why is it legal to smoke while driving, but not to drink from a bottle of water? If you drop a water bottle, it doesn't set light to your trousers!)
Half the people on the roads are probably not in a fit state to drive. What is surprising is that there are not more accidents!
Mike, they are there. The Commission naturally has numbers and given health, mortality and so on the numbers drop off sharply. Broken down a bit more, the biggest age group is naturally 25-49. But within that the over 40s begin to drop off slightly, then more and more in the next group toward 64. Early to late 30s are the biggest representative group. They have breakdowns by gender and by the 1000 kms (not miles) and each equation comes out much the same with the upper 30s lot always on top. For instance, one interesting indicator in the 25-49 group is that accidents in general are far higher among women driving with children than men, but then we tend to know that generally more mothers do school runs, take children shopping and so on. I am, and have been most of my life now, a social scientist, therefore am expected to use (bl**dy) statistics but never simply the first ones I bump into, a single set or whatever. I now instinctively look for as many axes and variants as possible. I am also a human being with prejudices and in this case had more or less the same views as you. Very comprehensive statistics and other studies that are too detailed to go into show we are prejudiced. As hard as it is, we have to admit that we are long in the tooth and just perhaps our generation is not as pure as driven snow on the roads. It came as a bit of a shock to me, but I'll take it as a lesson learned and bear it in mind.
As my old boss used to say, when he was about to be more than normally insulting, "With respect.......!" ......statistics only work if you understand what you are looking at. It seems you are just looking at the raw numbers, but you could only make a meaningful comparison if you knew the total number of drivers in each age group and looked at the percentage who had accidents. You might also get a very different result if you looked at accidents per mile driven. Then again, 65+ is open ended and will include drivers aged up to 100, or more. Finally, young drivers are more likely to be driving illegally and UK statistics I have seen are for "Licensed Drivers", so the results are distorted. But humans are poorly skilled at drawing valid conclusions from numbers, which may explain a lot of the problems in the World. For example - Israelis killed by Hamas rockets - 3. Israelis killed by their own people in road accidents (2013) - 303. Logical conclusion: Mr Netanyahu should leave the neighbors alone and concentrate his efforts on road safety awareness at home.........
18-24: Motorway 211, Rural 2603, Urban 1473, Total 4287
25-49: Motorway 922, Rural 6074, Urban 3434, Total 10431
50-64: Motorway 420, Rural 2974, Urban 1921, Total 5315
65+ : Motorway 272, Rural 2912, Urban 3482, Total 6666
Those are driver related fatal accidents in the EU from the EC Transport Commission. Broken down it is a lot of data. The 25 to 49 group are the 'worst' peaking at 38. Just looking at France and the UK as examples the pattern is the same. All that we might have assumed (myself included) seems to indicate that over 65s whose sight, responses and overall fitness might not be as they were (and who also either drive at the extremes of like a bat out of hell or an uncertain tortoise) are better than the middle age group only but pointing a finger at the youngest is certainly subjective and wrong.
As for misreading statistics, no way. Firstly, I do not put a great deal of faith in them generally since the margin or error is so great and secondly no two sets of them ever correspond which is not confidence inspiring and thirdly they are used as a form of propaganda. For instance, with a bit of delving I found that one of the partner organisations of HelpAge sampled in one low population area with a tiny city and no really large towns and came up with statistics that showed 65+ people having almost no accidents at all. That I will not accept under any circumstances. However, taking these as a guide since they are reported accidents it provides a good indicator.
Maybe you have misread the statistics. Older drivers are more likely to die in accidents because they are less able to survive serious injury. But the figures I have seen suggest that over 65s are slower, safer drivers. Could it be that retired people are in less of a hurry.......?