Who is at fault?

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Originally Posted by procrastination inc

"did the right thing by not accepting responsibility"

I object to that being a default response in any occasion. That is the sort of muddle headed legalese trickery that will stuff this country.

People need to own what they do.

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No its quite important. Did you know that a large supermarket chain in this country tells all its high school aged employees to never apologise to anyone they injure by accident - ie. If employee X hits customer Z with a trolley by accident, the required response is "Do you require first aid assistance", not "I'm sorry, my mistake, are you all right?" The latter insinuates that the employee and by extension the company are at fault, then customer Z can go off to start a lawsuit on the premise that X admitted fault.

Say you have an accident with a hoon in a commodore and step out and say "Sorry bro, that was my fault" you could be up for big $$$ even if his car was not roadworthy and illegally modified.

By saying anything relating to fault or responsibility, you've given perfectly admissible evidence for someone to sue you. It more "legal trickery" to provide an answer as that gives the other party something to work with.:(

My second collision if anyone is interested, I think demonstrates that things are not always clear cut and sometimes insurance companies just pay up rather than making a fuss.

I was making a right turn across three lanes of traffic.
The traffic was all stopped by a red light.
They had all left the intersection open. There was sign at the intersection that said they should do that. (I've forgotten the exact wording)
I made it safely across two of the lanes of traffic.
What I didn't expect was that someone in a red Honda Prelude would come racing up the last lane near the gutter. (At the speed you would expect the driver of a red Honda prelude to drive.)
Consequently I hit him on the driver's side mudguard.
Both cars were still quite drivable but he wanted to make a big deal of it by leaving his car blocking the lane and ringing the police.
When they arrived, they were not impressed and told him to move his vehicle immediately. As it was such a minor incident, if I remember correctly, they just told us to exchange details and to report the incident to our local station.

I got a letter from his insurance company claiming that it was going to cost some enormous amount of money to fix the Honda. All the local panel beaters I spoke to reckoned the figure was greatly inflated.

I gave all the details to my insurance company, especially the bit about the Honda driver entering the intersection in contravention of a road sign.
They apparently did some investigating and came to the conclusion that they couldn't mount a strong enough argument that I was not at fault.
Everybody's insurance company just paid for their own repairs.

I suppose that in the eyes of the law I failed to make a right turn with due safety.
I believe the other driver ignored a road sign and a rule about entering an intersection when he wouldn't be able to drive out of the intersection.

In spite of the legal wrongs and rights of the situation, I still believe that in the circumstances I had good reason to expect that I could cross the intersection safely.

Anyway that was 10 or 15 years ago, so it doesn't really matter does it.

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Originally Posted by mcrover

Not in Cranbourne.....:mad:

On 3 occasions so far with the locals they have just brushed us off and not done a thing, once with the DH's accross the rd doing burnouts in the T intersection near my house and smoking out the street, even with photo's and rego numbers as well as videos of the same bloke riding his quad bike up and down the street they say "we cant do anything" and disappear out the back without even taking any details.:mad:

I tried reporting some suspect Emails and they wouldnt even tell me who to contact so I rang Packanham instead who were very helpfull.:)

MrsMc had a stupid chick drive into her Carolla in a carpark while she was stationary and even though there was no rego lable on the car, the driver admitted it wasnt her car and wouldnt give any details other than her phone number so she went to report it to the local's and they fobbed her off as well and told her they couldnt do anything..:mad:

There are better cops around than what we have here I hope your one of them Huckster :mad:

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Sorr to hear that you have dramas down your way Macrover, I guess it's ike any type of service, you get good and bad. I always try and treat people the way I'd like my family to be treated if they present themselves at a police station with a problem.

Hucksta

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Originally Posted by joel_nicholson

By saying anything relating to fault or responsibility, you've given perfectly admissible evidence for someone to sue you. It more "legal trickery" to provide an answer as that gives the other party something to work with.:(

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Sorry - that's untrue - at least in NSW. You can apologize in any negligence situation and it can't be used against you in court.

This was changed to allow people to say they are sorry and for the other party to accept it and help them move in. It's especially relevant in medical negligence cases.

Everything came together today rather quite nicely, even if it wasn't the most favourable of outcomes.

My friend does not have to pay to have the Indonesian Woman's car repaired as per se she didn't have any insurance and should not have been driving that car (not a "nominated driver", the car is registered to her workplace).

He has been [professionally] advised not to make a claim as it will be cheaper and less problematic to just fix the broken plastic on the suzuki and forget about it:D