finally! after the twat in the van took me out i have finally got a text today saying the third party have accepted liability, This started on the 21st feb! with 4 witnesses in my favour! a police report in my favour! and he had no witnesses!! luckly i have a new bike but im still out of pocket for roughly a grand, i have a compressed disk,and 3-5 months of physio ahead for muscle/ligament spasm all of which is causing a lot of pain every day.they cant tell me when i can expect the said grand or any sort of compo for that matter and to top it all off the twat that hit me was at the side of the road last week being held by his throat after hitting a merc on the same road( feel like i missed out there!) lol why does it take so long in a clear cut case?? rant over!
Insurance Companies are expert at procrastination. Have a search on here for TC who works for a legal firm, he posted something a little while ago about his company being willing to deal with "smaller" injury cases for forum users.
If it makes you feel better it took me 3 years to sort an uninsured driver hitting my car in the rear
Not all Insurance Companies are so bad! It takes time because the employees don't sit around all day waiting for your claim to arrive for them to leap into action to respond to, so it gets assigned to a handler and there has to be all information logged on file, then a more senior member of staff may be assigned it to make a decision before letters etc. are sent out. For the Personal injury side you now need to pursue keep detailed records of treatment, costs, mobility restrictions experienced and pain (frequency / severity) and also drugs / pain relief / treatment for pain. It could take you a few years for settlement while you recover from your personal injuries. Hope the recovery goes well and you can enjoy the replacement bike
I hope it all gets settled to your liking ASAP but insurance companies like to drag things out and there is a growing practice of settling claims on a 50 / 50 basis so both parties pay their excess and loose their NCB. Win win for the insurance companies. this happened to my ex who was sat stationary at a T junction when the car turning in to the junction hit her as he wasn't even looking at the time. no witnesses so they settled 50 / 50 even though from the damage and impact points to both cars you could see who was at fault.
Do not accept £1,000. If you are being told that is what your injuries are worth, then they have seriously undervalued your claim. The value of your injuries is very much dependent on how long it takes you to make a full recovery, and then what the long term prognosis is, and this includes any problems you might experience later in life, This is part of the reason that it would be foolish to settle your claim in anything less than 12 - 18 months for reasons I shall explain. Many injuries may seem quite minor or simple, but we never know what underlyng probems may exist. If you settle before yu have made a full recovery, you are letting the third party insurers off lightly, because they already have an idea of what sort of costs they are looking at, but if they make you a low offer and you accept, they get a massive pat on the back (and with some a big bonus as well) If you then settle and sign what is called a full and final settlement and 18 months later you still have problems, you cannot go back and say Hey, I want more money, your only option would be to sue your solicitor for professional negligence. In most cases, the injuries have either fully healed or they have settled to the point where there will be no significant change in the future, and on that basis id there are still ongoing problems, then the medical expert can recommend a course of treatment and it helps with a proper valuation of your claim, or if you have fully healed, then again your claim can be valued properly. The other side will try and string it out and it is often because of this, despite overwhelmng evidence in your favour, they will wait until proceedings are issued before they will talk settlement amounts. They know that once proceedings have been issued that you are serious and they also know that if it goes to trial it will cost them an arm and a leg on top of current costs. As a rule of thumb,minor injuries should be settled between 12 - 18 months, providing liability is admitted Moderate injuries, 18 - 24 months Serious injuries 24 - 36 months providing a full recovery has been made. In the case of brain injuries however, you are looking at north of 4 years, because that is how long it takes for a brain injury to plateau and settle enough for a determination to be made with regards to a long term prognosis. But what your solicitor should be doing is pressing the other side for an admission of liability, because once they have this they can demand that they mitigate their losses by paying for private medical treatment, and they cannot refuse this but it means that you can jump the queue and go private rather than deal with the NHS. If your solicitor is insurance appointed, then you are experiencing what 95% of those with legal expenses insurance experience, poor service. Most of the panel solicitors are owned either by the insurers or a claims management company and they are instructed to do the minimum and keep costs down. They want a quick settlement so that they can get you off their books and move onto the next sucker (I mean client) and screw them over. Either way, your claim is worth a lot more than £1,000. I cannot say how much as I do not know the full extent of your injuries and I am no medical expert, but even then, nobody can give you a figure until such time as you are back on your feet pain free and mobile. Also make sure you keep a record of all your travelling costs and out of pocket expenditure, damaged property and anything else you have lost as a result such as los of earnings, overtime, bonuses etc.
From reading the decription it sounds like he is £1,000 out of pocket / down after replacing the bike, it may be due to not yet recovering excess from the third party or simply the cost of buying a new bike vs payout / depreciation on the other one. Good advice on the timelines for recovery (and also the reason for ELTO and such like)
If he is £1,000 out of pocket,then that will form part of what is called specal damages and which inlcudes uninsured losses. A claim is divided into 2 elements General damages covers the cost of the actual injuries themselves. So for example thr maximum that someone can be awarded for say a severe brain injury is around £286.000. not million, thousand, and this is the same for paraplegia and tetraplegia. At the bottom end of the scale, a broken tooth is worth around £600. each injury is valued according to their severity, so minor, moderate and severe/catstrophic and the more severe the injury the more it is worth within the figures I have mentioned On top of that, there is also a payment for pain and suffering. The exception is if someone is in a coma or an induced coma as there is no pain and suffering. Then there is what is called Special damages, This covers everything else and includes damage to property, oss of earnings, travel costs and anything else where a cost has been incurred as a result of the injury and the crash. So when you hear of people being awarded multi million pound settlements, these are in catasrophic cases where on top of what I have mentioned, there may be special care costs, adaptations to property, loss of career and pension (slaries are worked out up to retirement age) loss of pension and so the list goes on. A schedule of costs is then compiled and the 2 values are added together and this provides the total overall value (there are some quite complex caculations that come into it as well but I hope you get the drift) and this is why it is important wherever possible to keep a record of all fonancial losses with receipts if possible as the other side cannot argie with proof and they often try and contest expenses, So, if there is a loss of £1,000 then this would be added to the schedule of losses and would be recovered as part of the settlement.
I got a call off my insurance yest, asking about the crash I had Crash? What crash I said, reeled of the reg for my bike after many phone calls I managed to get it sorted. Turns out it was a Vauxhall Astra, told them that's got 2 more wheels then my bike has but the astra was black like my bike. Wish they would have checked details before stressing me out
So time for renewal. With MCE at the moment. Got cheaper quotes through compare the market. Phoned MCE to discuss, they didn't even try to match any of the quotes. Just straight up cancelled the policy. twats Cheapest for fully comp is £258 from Express Insurance
