When I started driving I checked the blind spot pretty much all the time, I think it was because I rode a moped for a while before hand where it was essential - the "life saver".

Lately I've been doing it more again because there's been a few moments when getting on a certain motorway I've missed seeing cars already on the motorway. It's an odd one where my car has shit mirrors and the motorway is higher than the slip road.

This.

And any improvements you made on the vehicle recently should be accounted for. They don't usually pay much, but they are going to bang you (YJ) for Unrelated Prior Damage anyway so you might as well get some back.

Also, here if the insurance company makes what an owner feels is an exceedingly low settlement, they can be forced to provide a "like kind and quality" replacement at their cost. That can be a bit of work and research to them so sometimes they just ask for a number that works for you. Make it a thousand pounds higher than what you feel is fair. I hope your head is OK and the young lady also suffered no ill will. She made a driving error, but it was still an accident rather than an "intentional".  ;-)

How can a driver check their blind spot if it is blind?? That is like saying to the blind man, "Now, see here!"

I do do it on motorways every time for merging and overtaking and the like, way too easy for someone to sneak in there. I'm just not sure I would always for a right turn on a residential type road - I've been indicating ahead of time, I'm in the middle of the road so anyone passing that side would have to be in the oncoming traffic's lane and as I say I'll usually have a pretty good awareness anyway. But that probably doesn't account enough for any suicidal bikers/moped riders in the vicinity so I will have to consciously think about it next time and see what I do.

Did a quick search and value seems to be £3k some similar age/mileage.

There are some really low price ones with high mileages, so will probably have to be firm there.

Will be a couple of days before the insurance people collect it, so I'll investigate more later.

(hugs) Whats worse, a car crash or a hard drive crash?

Only people get hurt in a car crash. In the other you lose your game saves.

Speak to insurance asap and report to police - you have 24 hours to report it or you've committed an offence.

Not necessarily - this is from the CAB website:

The driver may also have to report the accident to a police officer or at a police station, in person, as soon as practicable and in any case within 24 hours. This duty arises whenever the driver has not given their name and address at the scene of the accident, whether or not they were asked to do so.

If any personal injury is caused to another person, the driver must also produce a valid insurance certificate if asked to do so by a police officer, injured person, or anyone else directly or indirectly involved in the accident. If the insurance certificate is asked for, but not produced at the time, the accident must be reported to a police station as soon as practicable, or in any case within 24 hours, and the insurance certificate must be taken to a police station within seven days of the accident. However if the driver is asked at the time of the accident to produce insurance details and does so, there is no further obligation to report the accident to the police, as long as they have complied with the duties described above.

Here you don't have to report accidents where nobody is hurt and total damage is < $2000 (up from $1000 recently). I blew the driver's side mirror off a rental on a pylon a few years back, and when I called the cops they were annoyed I'd wasted their time. They also said I may as well continue on my vacation sans side-view mirror (which was hairy as hell coming back on the 401 -- the world's busiest highway). In the end the rental company didn't bother to submit an insurance claim, they ate the ~$300 replacement cost.

Ah. My brother was summoned to court for not notifying police of an accident (very minor bump, no damage, conversation had with other driver (politely) and they decided not to bother with anything else (no details exchanged).

The sherif through it out as soon as he saw the details of the 'case', but still a pain in the arse.

How did they find out?

Presumably the other party decided to try and get some insurance work done and had taken his registration plate.

When the police went to see my brother they said "were you involved in a minor collision with a X on Y at Z?" and he said "uh... Yeah, but we sorted it out at the scene" they treated it as having admitting failing to report/failing to exchange details.

Must have done their stats some good that week :-|

If no injuries and no backups, it's a no brainer.

But copying a few hundred gig of files is less painful than a bad crash would be - if they'd hit a foot or two to the left ... (erm)

When I spoke to the insurance person they asked if the police had been involved and I said no, and they said it was fine.

I stand corrected, then!

Only ever had one proper crash, it wasn't pleasant. Thankfully only cars were seriously damaged and everyone else healed within a few weeks/months.

That was over 2 years ago now, and the only lasting impact is that I'm far more cautious on single track roads now, and that's definitely a good thing.

Oh, and (hug)

Where's picture of Patch's car?