A friend was involved in a minor accident this evening.

He was pulling out of the middle lane (at the end of a dual carriageway), into a third lane for right turners at a roundabout.

The traffic was crawling in the two main lanes but the right turn lane was clear. He is indicating and noses out - all seems clear so pulls into 3rd lane. Unfortunately, either someone else had the same idea further back, or a car already in the third lane was coming in v fast.

Anyway, the oncoming vehicle braked hard, but still ended up making contact with my friend's driver's side door. Both parties pull over and exchange insurance details.

The contact was clearly very light becasue the driver's door just has an abbrasive scratch on it (not even a dent)and there was no apparent damage to the other car at all.

Questions:

Is it worth reporting such an incident?

How would insurance companies apportion blame in such an incident?

Following an experience a few years ago, my friend is concerned that he might get stiched up if the other party has some other damage on their car that they would "fit him up for" as a result of this incident.

What can he do to protect himself from this eventuality?

If you made it this far, thanks for reading - any (preferably informed ) opinions shall be gratefully received!

 

too late now but he shouldn't have exchanged insurance details, if there was no damage to the other car like you say there should be no need to claim, as for being ripped off (setup) unlikely i would say due to the type of incident(bit high risk for the other driver), if it was someone braking hard and causing a driver to hit their **** then thats the sort of accident you wanna look for being ripped off.

 

Thanks!

No further word on this, so it might have gone away.

 

It would be almost certainly be considered entirely your friends fault due to the other car hitting the door and not the back of the car. Would have been best not to have swapped details if it was agreed there was no damage to other car, if they make a claim against your friend make sure he claims for his damage as well.