Accident with cyclist - Seeking advice

Funnily enough they called me on Friday afternoon to get some more information.

Firstly, no claim has been made by the cyclist yet, but the accident claim handler was asking me his age, marital status and job to allocate some money in case he does claim

They said they might be able to put about "10% of the blame" on to the cyclist because he was riding on the pavement, but said because I 'hit' him with the centre of my car and not the passenger side, it was mainly my fault! They also wouldn't bother going after him for 10% liability because it wouldn't be worth if financially.

Also - as far as insurance algorithms go, it doesn't matter if it goes down as a 50/50 accident or 100% my fault, the result when it comes to renewal is the same.

The only way it would have gone down as no fault is if I was completely stationary and he literally ride in to the side of my car.

It's all a bit crap really. I've got 3-5 years now having to state on insurance applications that I hit a cyclist.
 
Plot twist - Had a letter dated November 21st from 'GC Solictors' saying their client holds me liable and has submitted it to my insurers via their portal.

They are claiming up to £25,000 damages! It states he was only off work 15 days.

Ridiculous. Is he paid £8500 a week??

The report also states the reason he was on the path was to go down an underpass below a roundabout.

That's 500 metres down the road from here
 
Basically that.

I've not got the time, nor money to hire a lawyer to fight this. Insurance companies have a seperate personal injury department and they already told me that if it went to court they would get 90%/10% liability.
 
Mercenary Keyboard Warrior said:
Wonder if the OP has seen the guy since, if hes doing that as a regular commute you would expect their paths to cross again, so to speak!

When I was a kid w found that sturdy sticks did a very good job of stopping cyclists peddling and turning them into exocet missiles ;)

OP should go out and wait in his drive when he sees the cyclist coming he should jump out right in front of him, and cause a collission ;)
Click to expand...

I had his bike in my garden for 6 weeks. I returned it at the weekend.

I did ring his bell but nobody was in, so I left it around the side of his house (as he asked) and took lots of photos of it to prove it was there and sent them to him.

Edit - He told me is was a cheap old bike that he just used to cycle to the station, so he can't be claiming anything there.

It was fine, ironically. About £3 worth of damage to a rubber handle seal...I rode it around my garden and it worked fine.

Yet it did £1250 worth of damage to my car.
 
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I don't think I mentioned, but I had a phone call from the Police in December. The cyclist had submitted his own police report and left out loads of key facts!

I'm glad the police called me, because he didn't have access to my report for some reason, and the cyclist claimed in his report that I "accepted responsibility" and that I told him that I "wasn't looking". He hadn't mentioned there was dash cam footage, nor the fact that he was cycling on the pavement! Clearly some sort of ruse to get favourable judgement from the insurers.

So I sent the footage to the officer whilst I spoke to him on the phone, he took one look at it and said I hadn't done anything wrong

I said - "I wish you would tell my insurer that"

Haven't heard anything since then.
 
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