Had a bit of an accident…

Had a little bit of an accident this evening on the way home from work… Not sure where I stand, but luckily, 99%, if not 100% of the damage, was taken by my front bumper… I say luckily, it’s pretty shit, but due to age and limited funds, that potentially means I can get out of having to pay anything to the insurance company…

So what happened? Basically, here’s where it happened… The Google StreetView of the junction ain’t great so this is the best I could do:

I am where the blue BMW is… Van driver is where the black Punto is. I’ve stopped for the box junction as my exit straight across wasn’t clear, plus the fact that there was someone trying to turn right into Old Hill… so I let that person across, and by the time they’d finished going across, my exit was clear. One person from where the Punto is had pulled out, so I accelerated forwards. As I started to pull away, a van driver pulled out from the left where the Punto is, with only the narrowest gap to pull out. He then immediately broke. Now when I saw him start to pull down, firstly I had a bit of horn usage, and I didn’t brake, but I let off the accelerator as I could see he would JUST and I mean, JUST make it if I stopped accelerating, but I wasn’t expecting him to suddenly brake. The front left corner of my car then hits the metal foot plate on the back right corner of his van, making a big crack in my bumper and pushing the lower grille clean out.

After a bit of arguing, we pulled into the next side road and exchanged details… The van driver behind me also stopped and gave his details as a witness… but his claim was that I carried on accelerating while the guy pulled out on me, which I definitely did not do, plus with the brake lights being so low down, I don’t think he saw him braking. I barely saw it they were that low down.

So from what I could see, there wasn’t even a scratch on his, but I didn’t think to take any photos at the time as I was still so pissed off… but he’s gonna get it checked out. It was basically a solid bit of metal as a step up into the fan. It jutted out about 2ft from the rear of the van. I swear stuff like that should be illegal when the vehicle is moving….

Damage to mine:

So I guess it’s an excuse to get a VXR bumper finally, but I don’t have that sort of money at the moment…. so what do you guys reckon? Firstly, is it repairable, and secondly, how much do you reckon I’d be looking at if I paid it out of my own pocket?

If I have to go insurance, I’ll go insurance, but as it stands, going through the insurance will more than likely sting me for a lot more money than if I just paid for the repairs…

I’m still going to call the insurance company and inform them it happened so it doesn’t come back to bite me, but I’m going to inform them that under no circumstances am I making a claim until further notice…