Got hit by a cab today.

Diddums

Diddums

Diddums

Caporegime
Joined
24 Oct 2012
Posts
25,664
Location
Godalming
Dunno who's fault it is yet, all happened rather quickly. Gonna see if I can get some CCTV footage tomorrow. I'm fine, the cabbie's fine, but I can say for certain that those boris bikes are built like tanks. I cycled another 5km on it before parking it.

Anyway, happened here. I was on the cycle lane on the left, crossed over the carriageway and got hit by the cab. The guy was in shock, I told him I'm fine and offered to call an ambulance / cops / get him a bottle of water / whatever, he declined and said he's just going to head home for the night. Going by his age and his cab, he's knocking on retirement's door and just wanted to eke out the last year or so in this cab before hanging up his keys which just disappoints me more as the guy's unable to earn any money whilst his cab's in the body shop.

The damage:

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It was the first time he'd hit a cyclist and the first time I've been hit by anything. He was amicable about it and still called me an hour later to make sure I got home ok.

My questions:

Will his insurance cover this, and what can I expect to pay?
Will he lose any income or does cabbie insurance have loss of income cover? Or maybe he'll get a loaner from the bodyshop whilst it's in?

Don't know what to expect, @Jean-F you able to shed any light on this please?

Cheers :)
 
ANDARIAL said:
ummm if you were at the bottom of that cycle lane and crossed over the solid white line would that not make you to blame as you are supposed to stop?
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I'm heading there later to see if I can get any CCTV footage. We were both in shock and didn't stop any witnesses so we've got no idea who's at fault.
 
Two dents, respray, new wing mirror, wind deflector.

Guess how much.

No, less.

No, less than that even.

£750. Yes. Really.

Anyway. Phoned Santander Cycles, they basically said that as their bike is fine and nobody's injured they're not gonna get involved, so I told the cabbie that he needs to pass my deets on to his insurance peeps and tell them it was a Santander bike and if they want to duke it out they can contact them and take it from there. He did say however that the odds of hearing anything about this ever again are fairly slim, this is barely worth their time even. They'll just fork over the £750 and get on with life which suits me perfectly fine.

Also...

My name is David.
The cabbie's name is David.
The bloke on the phone's name is David.

You couldn't make this up.
 
It seems like a confusing junction.
If you take a couple of steps back on streetview you can get a better idea:
0LKwBLQ.png
If i'm reading it right, the set of lights in the foreground controls traffic to stop at the solid white lines in the foreground. One set for the road and one set for the cycle lane.
Then about 10 metres further there's another single traffic light which controls the bike lane only (you can see a couple of cyclists waiting at the red light). There's no further stop line for road traffic there but you can see the light from the road so might get confused and think it applies to road traffic.

My guess is you cycled through the first set of lights at green and missed the second set at red so continued onto the road. Could also have been the cab saw the bike lights at green, thought that applied to him and missed the red light at the road junction so continued through.
 
Diddums said:
Anyway. Phoned Santander Cycles, they basically said that as their bike is fine and nobody's injured they're not gonna get involved, so I told the cabbie that he needs to pass my deets on to his insurance peeps and tell them it was a Santander bike and if they want to duke it out they can contact them and take it from there. He did say however that the odds of hearing anything about this ever again are fairly slim, this is barely worth their time even. They'll just fork over the £750 and get on with life which suits me perfectly fine.
Click to expand...

If there's no damage to the bike and no witnesses around, then i imagine it'll go down as a non-fault claim for the taxi driver as his insurance company won't have anyone to claim against. If he's close to jacking it in then it might not be much of an issue - i don't know if there's a separate insurance for personal that you'd have to declare claims on, or if he'd get shafted on a private car too.
 
touch said:
It seems like a confusing junction.
Click to expand...

It's an awful junction, very confusing to anyone who's not familiar with these things. A lot of the cyclist junctions are very confusing to non-locals as they make very little sense. The city wasn't built with cycling in mind and it the cycle lanes are an afterthought, so they're just forced in and around the existing roads which leads to these awkward situations. You can literally see the confusion in a lot of tourist's faces when you come past on a bicyle.

Semple said:
If there's no damage to the bike and no witnesses around, then i imagine it'll go down as a non-fault claim for the taxi driver as his insurance company won't have anyone to claim against. If he's close to jacking it in then it might not be much of an issue - i don't know if there's a separate insurance for personal that you'd have to declare claims on, or if he'd get shafted on a private car too.
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I spoke to him just a little while ago and asked him if he was going to be out of pocket, he said the body shop just refitted the mirror and he's back on the road, he'll deal with the dents after Christmas when it's all a bit quieter.
 
Nobody was hurt, that's the main thing, and nobody got abusive. The damage is minor so wouldn't worry about it unless you know you were to blame by running the light, otherwise it's for the cabbie to worry about.

I've not found that junction confusing, more frustrating, did the right thing waiting at the 2nd red for a while even though the road was empty but it was a test of patience. Happened a few times between Farringdon and Blackfriars so figured next time I might just stay on the road.
 
Diddums said:
Two dents, respray, new wing mirror, wind deflector.

Guess how much.

No, less.

No, less than that even.

£750. Yes. Really.

Anyway. Phoned Santander Cycles, they basically said that as their bike is fine and nobody's injured they're not gonna get involved, so I told the cabbie that he needs to pass my deets on to his insurance peeps and tell them it was a Santander bike and if they want to duke it out they can contact them and take it from there. He did say however that the odds of hearing anything about this ever again are fairly slim, this is barely worth their time even. They'll just fork over the £750 and get on with life which suits me perfectly fine.

Also...

My name is David.
The cabbie's name is David.
The bloke on the phone's name is David.

You couldn't make this up.
Click to expand...
As my old Nan used to say, “There’s always a Dave”
 
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