nyclio

I was in an accident last Friday where the driver side rear door and rear quarter panel sustained quite a bit of damage. A driver in a left turn only lane merged into my car which was in a left-straight lane. He has an older (1995?) Nissan Quest minivan and on his van, the passenger side headlight area was damaged.

I told him I would go through the insurance (I have a $1000 deductible) to get my car repaired since it is a lease model that will be going back to Infiniti. I took the car to the bodyshop (a good trusted shop) and was given an estimate of $940 to repair the damage ($800-$850 in cash). A full police report was filed.

The police officer didn't write who is at fault; since he wasn't there to witness the accident; all he wrote was what happened:

Vehicle 1 was traveling eastbound and says vehicle 2 side-swiped vehicle 1.

Vehicle 2 was traveling eastbound and says vehicle 1 side-swiped vehicle 2.

Then there are diagrams of where damage occurred.

I told the guy that he could either pay out of pocket for my repair or I will go through the insurance. However, he is convinced that he was not at fault in this accident and does not want to pony up any cash. Secondly, he said since he feels I was mostly at fault, we can call it no-fault and I can pay to fix his minivan (which isn't even worth fixing from the looks of it) and he will pay for my damages.

I'm not sure where I should go with this or what I should do.

Any and all advice is welcome.

Thanks.

TeknoKing

If you make a claim, it will be 50% / 50% fault.

You both will pay to fix each others cars. You will pay $1000 bucks deductible for an $800 job as you say. So it's your call. Do notify your insurance company ASAP, before the other guy calls up your insurance with a bs story.

good luck!

ggesq

iTrader: (1)

Please continue this discussion in Ramblings or Car Talk in the off topic section. Sicne we can't move threads there, feel free to restart the discussion. Thanks.