Appeal for witnesses

[maestro]

A long shot I know, but was anybody in the vicinity of Westwood Hill and Crystal Palace Park Road junction at about 13:45 today? A head on collision occurred between a black Toyota Prius people carrier and a silver Mercedes Benz C-Class saloon. Please PM me if you happened to see this accident happen.

[mikej]

Which were you driving, Maestro??

[Eagle]

Mike

If you are looking for independent witnesses best that info not made public.

I hope no one was hurt.

[bensonby]

Out of interest was it a reportable collision? (That is when the police have to be involve if someone is injured etc.)

[maestro]

Police and ambulance were in attendance, the other driver had suffered a hand injury. I'm extremely shaken by the event, my ears are still buzzing after two days as a result of several air-bags having deployed.. I'm also aching all over, that not helped by having to endure an eight hour coach trip from Victoria to Carlisle last night, arriving 5am this morning. I only drove down on Sunday with the sole purpose of collecting documents I needed to enable me to complete a property purchase up here, I intended to have driven back up yesterday in order to do this. I made an immediate appeal for anyone who might have seen this happen as there were totally conflicting allegations about the status of the traffic lights at the time. It also transpired that we share the same insurer, due to this, a police officer at the scene kindly advised me to be wary that some insurers in disputed liability situations, with no witnesses and the word of one party against another, will try and impose a “knock for knock” settlement where both parties will have excess payments to make, both lose their no claims bonus and are not provided with a loan car whilst repairs are done. This would obviously save the insurer a lot of money. I therefore, from the outset of dealing with our shared insurer, made it absolutely clear that I am not accepting disputed liability. I asked them to look at the accounts of what happened and to determine very quickly which party they consider is 100% liable. This was resolved by the insurer yesterday so I'm very relieved they acted so promptly.

This just shows how a moments carelessness on the road can have massive consequences. With a combined impact of about 50mph, a motor cyclist in my place would probably have resulted in a fatality. Also of concern was that a child of around five was a passenger in the other vehicle, who was understandably very shocked and distressed by the incident, but fortunately didn't appear to be injured.. This also demonstrates the safety benefits of modern vehicles,. For years now I have only bought vehicles which have a full 5 star NCAP safety rating, Tuesday was my first opportunity for putting that policy to the test.

For legal reasons |I haven't commented on which vehicle belongs to me and in case of any intended prosecution by the police can I ask you to be careful what is discussed here.

[maestro]

Mike

If you are looking for independent witnesses best that info not made public.

I hope no one was hurt.

Brian

I was sure I'd seen you somewhere before dispensing sound advice on car insurance matters.

[youtubes]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3O6aZ2ImEU[/youtubes]