Safe Speed Forums

Suggestion - police not helping - isn't there a police complaints dept who look out for things like that

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lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

My GF has been trying to ring the police officer concerned as she is back on duty today (7am - 7pm) apparently nobody else in the force can help with this.

Said officer does not answer her phone and does not return calls.

Going through IPCC or whatever is going to take far too long.

Really getting annoyed about this now.

Have you tried PM'ing In gear. He might be able to offer the odd suggestion which might chivy them along a bit.

Finally getting somewhere.

We eventually got through to the copper who wanted to know why the hell we were calling her and not speaking to (random desk copper who we've never heard of and doesn't work in reception), of course that officer isn't on duty until tomorrow, which is now today.

I went fishing the claims lines last night and got lucky, found the correct insurer on my 4th try, though once they realised I wasn't another insurance company they clammed up real quick, but would confirm that they insure that vehicle.

The police still refused to give us an address (because of the alleged assault business) but would give us her name, we got the address via Facebook, HelpHire have contacted the insurance company and a hire car will be delivered to our house tomorrow morning.

Jesus H Christ on a bike, they don't make it easy do they?

Now, about those modifications. I suspect we have a lot more crap to go through before this is over.

well done lum. good ol' morons with revealing facebook accounts.

got a log of all the time you've spent pursuing this? might be worth claiming for time and expenses.

I'm appalled (but not surprised) at just how unhelpful and uncaring the police are.

We live in a society where the police are there to address disputes such as this, if they wash their hands of it, at what point does it become justified to take the law back into your own hands?

Best wishes with getting this sorted BTW.

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Fear is a weapon of mass distraction

Still no hire car.

To be fair, it's because they don't have any autos in stock in south Wales, so I'm giving her a lift to work on Monday and the Somerset branch will be delivering a car, unfortunately she has a choice of a Vectra or a Golf and isn't keen on either (she hates FWD generally, hates the half second lag on the Vectra's accelerator and hates the Golf seats). Personally I'd choose the Golf simply for it's virtue of not being a Vectra.

This is getting worse and worse

The good news is she has a hire car now, a Golf GT Diesel. She hates it, obviously, but it could be a lot worse.

Helphire sent an assessor round who turned up at the car unannounced and was a complete jobsworth and just looked up the car in the little insurance book, 1990 200SX = £850, when asked where you'd get a 200SX with only 15,000 miles on the engine and no rust for £850 he didn't care. On PistonHeads, 200SX's of this generation sell for about £750 with blown engines, good ones go for a couple of grand, well modified and looked after ones for 3-5 grand and "drift spec" ones for anything up to 10 grand. The SXOC For Sale section has similar. She offered so show the guy these adverts, the receipts for the restoration work and for the engine build and he said he wasn't interested. He also reckoned 2 1/2 grand to fix the damage

Helphire have now declared that since it's a write off she has to go through her own insurance, but she does get to keep the hire car.

And now it descends from a tale of incompetence into a tale of complete farce.

Her insurance have stated that they're not prepared to examine it until they have taken the car away, she has asked them to confirm that they will give it back afterwards and after much arguing ("We don't like customers driving around in cars after they're written off", "I don't want to drive around in it, I just want all my parts that you might decide not to replace") have agreed to give it back but have refused to confirm that in writing.

They want to take the car to somewhere on the other side of the country for storage (storage at it's current location is free) but the engineer they've chosen to inspect it is based locally!

I have advised her to either call them, record the call and get confirmation that they are going to give the car back, or to contact her legal assistance (provided by the brokers) and find another company to handle the claim. Unfortunately the brokers only seem prepared to do that if it's one of their approved lawyers.

If anyone knows of a good lawyer that deals with this sort of crap, based in the South Wales area, please let me know! No-win No-fee style is preferred, or at least one that will waive any sort of pre-payment due to it being a rear-ender with an admission of liability.


God I hate insurance companies. They're all scum.

Well there is some good news and some bad. I really need some advice now.

First the good news. At about the time that her insurance paid out, she managed to find a suitable replacement going for just over 2 grand. It's a 1994 model, originally an auto, been converted to a manual and has 120K on it's original engine, the only mods to the engine are bolt-ons (turbo, exhaust etc.) it's also had some rather tasty brake and suspension upgrades which are pretty damn close to what my GF was aiming to do anyway. So we buy that, take it home, drop it off at the local 200SX specialist to do an engine and tranny swap since her engine only has 30K on it and has forged pistons. (ironically, though the previous owner lived in Bath, he took it to the same guy to get most jobs done, including the auto -> manual conversion, now he gets to convert it back again)

So far so good..

After much arguing with the assessor, they valued the car at £1.9K, from this they've deducted a buy back fee, and her excess, plus we have to collect the damn thing from Essex, looking at getting a little over a grand out of it.

"Oh, but the excess will come back from the other driver's insurance, and the rest you can make up with the (genuine) personal injury claim".

What insurance?

Turns out that they'd cancelled the policy 3 days earlier, we are assuming they showed that certificate to the police since they wern't on the MIB and wern't done for no insurance. They are ignoring letters from our solicitor, and this is where it gets annoying.

Our insurance don't care. They've paid out and she'll lose her no claims bonus.
The solicitor apparently doesn't care. They want to claim personal injury from the MIB. They don't think it's worth taking the driver to court as they're probably on benefits. (There is no evidence that they're on benefits. Both the driver and her mother own Suzuki Vitaras)
The police don't care, that officer is now on holiday and apparently no-one else in the force can deal with an allegation of driving without insurance.

We still don't know the driver's address, though some possibilities have come up we have not made any attempt to check them out or make contact as this is probably an unwise (and possibly illegal) thing to do.


Edit: Really pissed off with the police on this one. They have access to evidence in writing that the person was not insured on that date, evidence that they were driving on that date in the form of two police officers, some ambulance staff and a bunch of witnesses to the accident. They know where the person lives. They can probably also get them on fraud charges too. That's two detections and two crimes solved for very little effort, but apparently too much. I guess they'd rather just sit there at the side of the road and wait for the uninsured drivers to come to them, rather than actually visit the house of an uninsured driver.

Letter to your MP, and the cc'd to the Chief Constable.
If your local paper is any good, you might wish to make them aware when you get the results.
re. the solicitors reluctance, you might want to mention this to his professional standards people.

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Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

Problem is the solicitor was allocated by HelpHire. I suspect they are acting in the best interest of their *customer* (ie. HelpHire), not their client. Their customer will want to minimise losses now that the 3rd party is uninsured.

Perhaps we should go to one of the local no-win no-fee types and see if they will take up the case. There is one in the high street of the next town that shares premises with a bailiff company who may be more open towards dealing with these people.

This is getting more ridiculous by the day. Now the storage company that Markerstudy use are trying it on.

Firstly when our recovery driver turned up they demanded a £117 release fee. We were not advised that there would be any such fee when she (reluctantly) agreed to let them take it.

Her tax disc is gone, and so is her SXOC tax disc holder. There's about £80 worth of tax left on that car

There was also about £70 worth of fuel in the tank as she had filled up completely about 5 minutes before the accident. The tank came back completely bone dry.

So that's £267 that the storage company have scammed out of her, in addition to losing the excess and the cost of transporting the car back from it's unnecessary excursion to Essex, and the buyback fee. Not to mention the fact that they've grossly underestimated the cost of obtaining a car of the same type and restoring it to a similar condition.

I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. I haven't ever dealt with a recovery/storage company that have been anything other than lowlife shady scumbags.


Meanwhile the Police are still doing bugger all about the uninsured driver whose address they know, oh and she's going to lose her NCB over this too.

Bumping this thread because we're still having problems.

Markerstudy, her insurance company aren't interested in claiming from the MIB. They can't be bothered, instead she's just going to lose her NCB and have a fault claim on her history.

Can they even do this, can we force them to claim off the MIB, can we make the claim ourselves?

You can't force them to make a claim. You can cut them out of the loop, and deal with the matter yourself. I did this when a fool ran into my car. I didn't tell my insurance, I simply went after him myself through his insurance firm. I told them to take mine to the menders, and have it fixed, and to give me a car while it's being done.

A couple of days after, a trailer brought the temporary car, and took the old one away. Then they said that my car was a "write off", whatever that means.

So I bluffed them. I told them to bring it back unfixed, and I'll do it myself and send them the bill, whatever it might be. Suddenly, it became an "un-write-off", and it was fixed after all! You have to be hard on them. It's good if you know the law - I was just trying it on, but it worked out OK.

PS: I never tell my insurance anything. They use any excuse to charge you more.

It was an uninsured driver that hit her, hence it's had to go through our own insurance.

If I was claiming from the 3rd party I would never go through my own insurance.


Edit: I've just had a nice chat with a really helpful bloke at the MIB. Apparently since the 3rd party cancelled the policy 3 days before the crash and showed the now invalid certificate to the police, that would mean her insurance is liable under "Article 75". Does anyone have any more information about this process?

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Speed limit sign radio interview. TV Snap Unhappy
“It has never been the rule in this country – I hope it never will be - that suspected criminal offences must automatically be the subject of prosecution” He added that there should be a prosecution: “wherever it appears that the offence or the circumstances of its commission is or are of such a character that a prosecution in respect thereof is required in the public interest”
This approach has been endorsed by Attorney General ever since 1951. CPS Code

Well, a local solicitor might know (for example) that Inspector X is an utter divvy and that the right person to contact to get things started and completed is sergeant Y.

Sometimes local knowledge can help.

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www.thatsnews.org.uk / www.thatsnews.blogspot.com / http://thatsmotoring.blogspot.com/

Ok, an update and some good news, she's had a call from the lawyer, apparently Tesco (not Direct Line who is the provider of the certificate that the uninsured driver showed to the police) have accepted that they were an "Section 35" insurer at the time of the accident, so she must've been a serial abuser of the 14 day cool off period.

Now we're in the position of claiming off a 3rd party insurer that has admitted ability.

So.

She is claiming for the excess and the personal injury, however that is still putting us at a loss. I think the should claim for more until we break even.

I haven't got the figures, but what we have is.

Value of car £1900 (seriously underpriced)
Less the excess (unsure, but irrelevant now)
Less buyback fee of £300

Total payout: £1600

New car - £2100
- 1994 Nissan 200SX S13
- standard engine which was smoking somewhat (hence the low price, these are rare cars these days)
- manual gearbox
- Rear spoiler removed and plastic pegs used to fill the holes in the boot lid
- Aftermarket suspension with 3 leaking shock absorbers
- Skyline brakes
- Still needs welding on the suspension towers and sills

Old car -
- 1990 Nissan 200SX S13
- recently rebuilt engine with Wiseco forged pistons (receipt available)
- recently rebuilt automatic gearbox with uprated valve bodies (receipt available)
- recent full restoration dealing with all rust issues and paintwork issues (receipt available)
- Rear spoiler removed during restoration and holes filled in properly and painted
- Aftermarket suspension in good working order
- Skyline brakes
- Volvo intercooler
- Garret T28 turbo

Work done so far to bring the new car up to the condition of the old car, not sure on prices for any of these
- Had to have some welding done to the rear seat belt anchorages on it's first MOT
- 4 new shock absorbers
- Engine and transmission swap including turbo, and intercooler

Even though I don't have prices for everything you can see that we're still at quite a loss here, even if we do make a personal injury claim.

You should be putting in a claim to the third party insurers for an exact replacement cost of the one that she lost. You don't pay an excess unless you get it repaired and you are claiming from *your* insurance company. She also has duty to mitigate her losses too. Just give them all the bills and total it up. They have a duty to put her back into the position she was in before silly cow hit her. As they have admitted it was their insured's liability they should pay up. If they moan that you went out and bought a car say the accident happened a year ago, would they have preferred to pay a year's car hire...

Why don't you have prices for everything you've done? Surely the garage that did the work should be able to provide receipts. Did you retain the old car? If so then I think it might make it more complicated if they wrote it off and will allow a value of the salvage so any pay out would be minus that amount I think.

As the car she has bought is 4 year's newer than the old one you have to allow for some consideration for that 'betterment'. It still shouldn't mean you shouldn't get back everything you paid out to get the new car up to the same standard of roadworthiness as the old car. Not sure about the modifications. Theoretically they should pay something towards re-doing them. What they would pay would depend on when they were done and how easily you could have purchased a car that was close to the old one.

I don't have the prices because it isn't my car. We do have the receipts, but technically it's none of my business so I haven't gone looking for them.

Regarding the 4 years thing, S13 200SXs are getting thin on the ground these days (mainly because they're an RWD car popular for going sideways in and many are cheap enough to fall into the hands of youngsters) and the market is all about condition, but the price guides use haven't updated to reflect this (and lets face it those guides aren't there to benefit consumers.

Her insurance paid out last year, and they have the typical clauses about not paying for modifications that all insurers do, but the lawyer is saying that because Tesco have now paid our insurance back the money, that's the end of the liability as far as car related expenses are concerned.

As far as getting back into the same position is concerned, I think she did the best she could to minimise costs (we wern't exactly rolling in cash anyway). The car she bought was in similarish condidition chassis-wide but mechanically it wasn't ideal. Buying back the old car and swapping over the upgraded engine and drivetrain was the most sensible way to ensure that we had a powertrain with the same modifications and was just as mechanically sound as the old one. The fact that we've had to do some bodywork on the new chassis and have proof of this and that the old chassis already had this done negates any betterment argument about a newer chassis IMO, but even if they do want to argue some betterment for 4 years that's fine.

The problem is our lawyer doesn't think it's worth pursuing, so we're kind of stuffed if we can't convince them.

Ah. She should have pursued the third party insurance co directly not relied on her own insurance company to pay as she could have just got the amount it actually costed to get a replacement car and bring it up to scratch. She has done a good job of keeping costs to a minimum so it would appear reasonable to expect the full cost of everything associated with the accident to be reimbursed. There is also the FSA that over sees insurance companies so you could get advice from them as to whether she could pursue the other insurer for the uninsured losses ie cost of getting car up to proper standard/excess etc. I would have thought this would be possible so I am not sure why the lawyer is making negative noises. Find another lawyer that will give you a second opinion as it seems slightly odd. If both policies ie hers and the third parties are both underwritten by the same insurance company underneath they may be trying to avoid paying more than they think they need to. Insurance companies seem to be cahoots with each other to keep payouts low and to undervalue cars, particularly rarer cars.

There are specialist insurance brokers that deal with modified cars so she can be properly covered. I've just found one called Nowell & Richards. They quoted me several hundred pounds less than I was already paying for better cover as cover includes replacement cost of mods. http://www.nowellandrichards.co.uk/