Parking Lot Accident - Is It Necessarily 50/50

mrajat

New Member
1
I had a minor accident at a mall parking lot in Illinois. The other driver backed into my car hitting the side and causing minor damage to the car body. The police told me they are considering the other driver at fault and putting him under "Unit 1" in the report.
Later on, I read the forums and found that parking lot accidents are considered 50/50 fault by insurance companies. Would that be true even though the police found the other person at fault? Can you please advise. I'm trying to determine if I should go through my insurance company, as it appears to be minor body damage to the car.

Thanks!
 
If your car is parked, then the other driver is at fault, case closed.
If your car is moving, it frequently is a mutual fault thing.

If the police report shows the other party 100% at fault, you have a case, but its not a slam dunk.

Usually parking lot accidents are a case of one backs out, the other backs out at almost the same time, causing a minor fender bender. These are usually considered mutual fault accidents. Police rarely investigate these nowadays.

Dan
 
I second Dan. And add that laws are different state to state and the claims can be handled differently by every carrier. I would file against the other guy first. If you file on your own it will be an At Fault Accident on your driving record and many insurance companies look back 5 years. Go for his.
 
I've never been in claims, but as far as I've heard when cops are called out to accidents that happen on private property, they have no jurisdiction and don't issue tickets.

Very often the person backing out is at-fault. I've only heard of 50/50 at-fault when it's 2 people backing out at the same time.
 
There are multiple things that adjusters look at in any accident, and particularly in parking lot accidents, they do look at the POI (point-of-impact) and such, in order to make liability assessments. Each state is different in their liability (pure comparative, etc), but parking lot accidents (when I was in personal lines claims) tended to typically be "word vs. word" situations.

And USF is correct, in that police 99.9% of the time do not write police reports on private property.

As with any accidents, I always strongly encourage people to get names and phone numbers of witnesses (who are willing to provide that information), as that can oftentimes assist significantly in liability assessments.
 
After seeing so many of my customers go thru hell trying with other driver's insurers in these situations (and no police reports to support them), I advise everyone to get out the car with the camera on your phone ready to shoot and start snapping from every angle possible to help show exactly how and at what angle the vehicles hit. Once they're moved out the way, any proof is gone.

My mom has been recovering from knee replacement surgery and hand surgery due to a rare arthritic condition that had locked her thumbs in place (and she's only 58). So I've been driving her car a good bit (it's a 2012 Mazda CX-9 SUV with every feature you can imagine, a huge step up from my old 2006 Mazda3)!

I was at the grocery store one day last month picking up some things for mom and for my grandma who lives next door to her. Just as I was walking out the door pushing my cart toward her car, I saw a guy pull in and clip the right rear corner very hard! I actually videod it from that moment on, including him backing up, parking the spot and getting out as if nothing happened. He still didn't notice me taking the video, I folllowed him into the store to see if maybe he was going to have the owner the White Mazda SUV paged....of course not, jerk!

So I approached him and told him I saw him hit it and the d-bag said, "Your word against mine!" To which I retorted, "I got you on video followed a few other words, MoFo and a few other nasty ones.....

I also told him I'd already sent it to my insurer and showed him my license as an agent (state issues it on a card for the wallet) and told him he needed to give me his name, contact info and insurance card immediately! He refsued and I dialed 9-1-1 and told him I'd count to FIVE then hit send and he'd not only be liable for the damage, but he'd be ticketed or possibly arrested for Hit-and-Run (which he would have done had he left without doing anything)....he fell for it, even though we were on private property.

The cosmetic damage wasn't nearly as bad as I feared, but it the rear bumper cover definintely had to be replaced. But he hit so hard, he damaged the actual bumper structure (the impact absorbing structure under the bumper cover which is made to crush on impact to avoid damage to the car's actual body). That put the bill close to the $1000 mark...

Moms' CX-9 also has a feature called a Blind Spot Monitor that uses cameras mounted under each rear corner of the car to determine if a car is in that space that the mirrors can't quite see. If it detects a car in that space, a warning light comes on in the top corner of the side view mirror on the appropriate side of the vehicle. The hit had damaged the camera/sensor and ended up pushing the bill to a total of $2930!!!

I called his insurance company daily for two weeks and he had never reported it to them and wouldn't return their calls! Surprise. I called my insurer (who is also the #1 company that I represent as an independent agent....over 80% of my polices are with them). They told me I should have called and let them deal with from day one.

They paid to have everything fixed perfectly and then recovered their money plus interest and fees for the time they spent to get it back. They have a reputation for getting their money back via subrogation and that, in turn, makes other companies afraid to fight them. They also made CERTAIN that the douche-bag's insurer reported the claim on his CLUE report so it will follow him for at least 3yrs!
 
Yeah, that's a good example of what should be done. Video and/or pictures. Especially if there was paint transfer on his car.

Unfortunately, I don't think someone's own company will be very helpful if you don't have collision coverage.
 
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