First Accident

[Mk12]

Only had the Cupra R since September last year but I've now had my first car accident since I started driving.

Picked the girlfriend up from the T.A. In Bristol on Tuesday 26th Feb, coming back to Weston on the A370 around 23:30, it's a 50mph zone for a while after Congresbury, before dropping to 40mph near to a pub called "The Full Quart" that has a speed camera near it (that I'm pretty sure is deactivated).

I'm doing 40 towards the camera, it's quite a long straight, I spot a Mitsubishi Shogun coming from the distance and it's up on my bumper before I can blink so I estimate he must've been doing 55-60, he sits inches from my rear for a while before we hit the next 50 zone and I accelerate up to around 55, he stayed at a distance for about 15 seconds before accelerating up behind me again and sits on my bumper for another 5-10 seconds, all I can see are headlights in my rear window and I'm starting to get a bit uncomfortable, I start to speed up to 60 to get some distance from him and the next thing I realize is the Shogun is now alongside me and slowly merging back into my lane from the oncoming lane, In my head I'm thinking there is no way he can't see he's not gotten past me, my door is in line with his front nearside door, we're approaching an island+bollard that separates the two lanes of traffic and allows a short turning lane into "Puxton Park" for the oncoming lane, I'm being forced more and more into the left side of my lane to the point where my nearside wheels are almost in contact with the grass/edge of tarmac, there is no traffic oncoming so I thought he would either slow down and get behind me or carry on and go to the other side of the island, he's slipped back a bit by this point, I am sat next to his front nearside tyre so I assume he's realized I'm here and is getting back behind me, slowly he drifts back out of my peripheral vision completely and I think ok he's spotted me, he'll get behind and tailgate me again, no....

The next second I hear a loud bang and my back end is launched to the left causing my front end to point towards the oncoming lane, I skid sideways across the short turning lane and steer back left to avoid going straight into the oncoming curb, steering left caused over correction sending me towards the second island+bollard so I steer back to the right and essentially drift sideways around them, my back end has now kicked out right because of the over correction and my rear offside wheel hits the curb causing my front end to catapult straight, my front offside wheel then hits the curb too, I'm left facing the wrong way in the oncoming lane as the Shogun speeds past down the road, overtakes what I think was a Silver Mercedes coupe of some variant and carries on towards J21 of the M5, a lot of swear words were uttered at this point and throughout the skid as I flew through the gears and caught back up to him, my girlfriend entered his reg into her phone and we chased him over the motorway, at this point the road splits into two into Weston, I wanted to continue after him but my other half was screaming and crying, never seen anyone like it so I stopped chasing and headed to the Police station whilst trying to calm her down, we had his reg found it to be a 2001 3.5 V6 GDi Elegance Shogun weighing in at around 2 tonnes so I believed things could be resolved...wrong

Turns out the Police weren't incredibly interested on 101, did nothing but put out "Observations" for the vehicle and said to go to the desk in the morning and report the incident, my insurance company confirmed my fears, he wasn't insured and found his tax ran out in December, my excess is quite high as I'm still relatively young and wanted lower insurance quotes, SEAT assessed the damage at £2618 and another garage said £2400, though I spoke to a third and they assessed at £1400 as I asked for alloy wheel refurb rather than replace, can't quite afford my excess right now as my road tax is due on 31st March for £250 and my insurance renewal for the year is due 26th April, two days after the incident I got tonsillitis and found out yesterday that due to some governmental reasons I may lose my job in 3 months, all in all....Great Success

Would add pics but still not sure how exactly...? Apologies for long post!

 

[m0rk]

Police not interested? Did you visit?

They'd take a hit & run seriously

 

[Mk12]

Incident logged when I reported the collision at the Police Desk next morning, got a reference number and received some paperwork for written statements in the post 2 days ago, aside from that they've said nothing.

 

[bigbadjay]

Hope you get him

 

[Phooo]

try and find his address and take pictures of his jeep before he has a chance to hide the damage...

 

[Pro1]

Have you looked through the MiB site to see if you can claim anything through them?
I had a bump years back, driver stopped, gave details etc... turned out the car wasn't registered, the details he gave were false and I was left with a written off car and couldn't claim, was only 3rd party f+t back then.
Was told about MiB so gave it a try and they paid me a few quid. I can't remember if it was whiplash or car damage or both they paid me for but it covered my losses n full.
Worth a try.
http://www.mib.org.uk/Frequently+Asked+Questions/en/Default.htm

 

[Nath.]

Incident logged when I reported the collision at the Police Desk next morning, got a reference number and received some paperwork for written statements in the post 2 days ago, aside from that they've said nothing.

That's about right. You won't hear anything else from them now. They're too busy eating donuts and manning speed traps to go and investigate your incident. As far as they are concerned you have insurance to get your car fixed. They have no photographic or video evidence that he has driven without insurance so they won't be interested.

God luck with it though.

You should have said you were injured and called 999 mate. They may have done more for you.

Welcome to how the police treat the public.

 

[CupraRmark]

In reading the above mate you speed up because your uncomfortable with how close he is ?? Wouldn't it be best to of just chilled out and maintain a steady speed and let him go past if he wanted to be a knob and cant wait, because now you accelerated with him held him out maybe when you could of braked and just let him do one which would of been the safest option, now you have a bill to pay and no one to claim off...


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[coggie]

Not the same thing but I had a van go into my car (whilst parked) and drive off. I got the reg...

I logged it all with the police, who eventually sent me a letter saying they'd look into it. With some chance sightings I managed to track the van down, and called the 'collision recording department' to tell them.

In the 10 weeks since the incident they'd established it wasn't taxed, insured or registered to anyone. Providing them with a location and description of the driver they were not interested, the PC said he'd have to ask his sergent if he could spend anymore time on the case. The answer turned out to be no.

Basically, don't expect much, and don't expect it anytime soon. As said above, they only care if you're hurt.

 

[TarekElsakka]

Man that's crazy, I'm so sorry you and your girlfriend have had to go through that horrible experience. The guy needs to pay for your repairs, and you have to take every possible measure in order to secure that. I'd talk to a lawyer about this if you can, maybe he/she can even just give you advice?

 

[Mk12]

In hindsight now that it's all happened I wish I had just slammed the brakes on when he came alongside me, at the time I just couldn't believe what I was seeing, you never think someone will intentionally ram into you, not to tar all with same brush but there are a few gypsy camps along that stretch so it's not entirely unlikely it was one of them :/ in which case I've got no chance and the police tend not to deal with them as they can be violent, I suppose lesson learned the extremely hard way. I'm going to go through MIB and see what happens, if I can get something back then great if not ill just have to keep my eyes out for his or her car.

 

[kazand]

In hindsight now that it's all happened I wish I had just slammed the brakes on when he came alongside me, at the time I just couldn't believe what I was seeing, you never think someone will intentionally ram into you, not to tar all with same brush but there are a few gypsy camps along that stretch so it's not entirely unlikely it was one of them :/ in which case I've got no chance and the police tend not to deal with them as they can be violent, I suppose lesson learned the extremely hard way. I'm going to go through MIB and see what happens, if I can get something back then great if not ill just have to keep my eyes out for his or her car.

Plod won't be interested if it's one of the travellers. at last job lad was working at bus garage in Hackney, locked van up & went for a brew, come back to discover side door forced and power tools gone. checked garage cctv clearly shows 3 "travellers" coming from encampment next door (proper council jobbie) and forcing van door then exiting back to said camp with booty. Lad had already rung plod, they turned up, took one look at cctv and shrugged. not a chance of them going onto the camp.

 

[coggie]

I'll just have to keep my eyes out for his or her car.

I wouldn't bank on that solving your problems. Unless you have something like video evidence showing the driver at the time of the crash, and a means of tracking them down. The police will not (and can not) do anything.

It's simple. They will deny it, and it will be your word against theirs.

 

[Deleted member 74601]

Agree with the post about MiB, I've heard about them paying out in cases.

 

[CupraRmark]

A shogun is probably owned by a caravan owner


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[Mk12]

Spotted him driving through town the other day, followed him for ages whilst on the phone to the police but all units were too busy to attend, he pulled into a petrol station as I waited across the other side of the road as at the time I thought there were either 2 or 3 blokes in the car.
He pulled out pretty quick from the station and got 4 cars between me and him so I ended up losing him as traffic was heavy around 6pm, got a description from the attendant, 5'6 late 40's early 50's and thick Irish accent, the attendant himself said he seemed like quote "a gypo" was on his mobile whilst filling up and goes there every couple of weeks, at least I know he's local. Police confirmed however that they can't prosecute him as I didn't get a description of the driver during the incident, seemed irrelevant that he was driving uninsured and no tax.

On a brighter note however, the R is in for repairs and fingers crossed will come back before Friday with some refurbed and gloss black alloys every cloud has a silver lining it would seem.

 

[andypower]

so hes driving around, no tax or insurance and the police havnt done anything.


typical.

and they wonder why we think their useless.


i'm sure a member on here must be a in the police

 

[CharlieRCupes]

A shogun is probably owned by a caravan owner


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[Nath.]

so hes driving around, no tax or insurance and the police havnt done anything.


typical.

and they wonder why we think their useless.


i'm sure a member on here must be a in the police

There are a couple that I know of. They're still bloody useless though.

You can spot them quite easy because they open most of their posts with "I'm a police man and........................"

 

[kazand]

so hes driving around, no tax or insurance and the police havnt done anything.


typical.

and they wonder why we think their useless.


i'm sure a member on here must be a in the police

The reason plod won't do anything (other than they are useless ) is the fact that if said "gentleman" pilot of Shogun is a member of the, ahem, "travelling" community he will have no tangible assets that can be seized if he is fined and doesn't pay. Of course, they could just chuck the toe rag in the nick, but that would probably infringe his civil rights or some such crap.
I caught part of one of them "roadpolicewars" things the other night, there was one incident with plod chasing a stolen motor (scooby iirc) the chase ended up in a pikey camp, driver bailed out and went into a caravan, coppers then bottled it, called for back up and cleared out of the camp. "we managed to get the car back" they said. yup but it was wrecked and you knew exactly where the scrote was but let him get away.