Bump ... oops !

Its probably not a record, but its not bad going.

Having your first car accident just 72 hours after you've passed your driving test.

Amanda took the car out today and whilst driving down a busy shpping street near here a jerk in a large 4WD reversed out of a parking bay and caught the back wheel arch of our car.

No one hurt, the dickheads car unscratched and just a slight dent and a surface scratch on our car, but it upset Amanda. Fortunately she had the presence of mind to remember what I'd told her to do in those circumstances and she got the fekkwits name and address and then a very kind third motorist stopped and offered his name as a witness to Amanda and wrote a statement on the back of an envelope which put the blame fair and square on the 4WD dick-for-brains.

All of which leaves me in a quandry now.

The insurance was all sorted out and she was covered to drive that car within an hour of passing her test, so it should be a simple job to ring the company tomorrow and put in a claim for perhaps a £300 to £400 repair (yes I've paid for "slight scratches" before, how could you tell).

But Amanda told me that the tool in the 4WD mentioned something about "I've got my witness too" and that he had two other males in the car with him.

And I've dealt with insurance companies and their fekkwit operations many times in the past.

I know for a fact that if we didn't have a witness statement then the insurance companies would simply deal with the incident in what they call "knock for knock", in other words both insurance companies involved would pay for their own drivers repair bills - and then my insurance company would come back to me and invoke the £400 "young driver" excess on me and mention the fact that my protected no claims bonus was under threat now, and of course next year the premium would be mysteriously increased to "gasping" proportions - in other words for the sake of a small scratch and a little dent in the wheel arch I would suffer financially, tremendously financially.

But wait you say, you have a witness, surely your insurance company will force the other party to pay all of your costs ?

Possibly, I reply, but just suppose that the other driver claims that he too has a witness, we don't know who the two other people were in his car, lets just suppose that he gets one of them to state that the roles were reversed and it was Amanda who was reversing out of the parking bay ?

Another knock-for-knock situation.

With such small claims the insurance companies wouldn't even question the validity of the witness statements because they can't be arsed and its easier just repairing the damage and getting their punter to pay for it himself, they certainly aren't going to invoke legal action to recover the cost of such a minor scrape.

Insurance company's are one big sack of shit, all of them.

I'll check the damage again tomorrow in the cold light of day, if its as minor as it looked in the rain this morning then I won't be advising the insurance company and Amanda will have learned another of lifes hard-knock lessons - this world is full of shits and sometimes they reverse into you and sometimes you have to keep quiet to avoid having to deal with the corporate ones.