Hit by a van...who to pursue?

OnYerBike wrote:

Not very helpful for OP now, but for future reference or if it helps anyone else, membership of organisations like British Cycling and Cycling UK, as well as certain bicycle insurance policies, include legal cover. So if you get hit, rather than wading through this s*** by yourself and facing the insurance company and their lawyers alone, you get your own lawyers to do the hard work!

I did ask British Cycling and Cycling UK who I should pursue but they wouldn't give me this simple advice (simple to them as they would've dealt with 1000s, if not more of these type of cases); I realise I wasn't a member but to be fair, that's advice that would have taken them a few seconds in a telephone call and I would've remembered them as being helpful as a result...not that I won't consider joining them in the future.

I did consider a No win, No fee arrangement but when I found out that most of the lawyers assigned to this handled 100s of cases at a time and were the most junior person in the organisation it didn't fill me with confidence (how much time could they designate to my case and chasing etc). The other (cycling and non-cycling related) lawyers I contacted were not interested as the claim value was so small (not to me!) and the injury minor (less than £10k).

I find doing things myself quite rewarding as well, and this has been an interesting experience, although extremely frustrating at times. If I hadn't have gone through myself this I wouldn't have known first hand how obstructive and convoluted the legal system is.

Part of the problem in this case was that the courts themselves gave out incorrect information and claimed not to receive vital information (from both myself and the defendants lawyers), which further delayed proceedings. The delays at my local court are also 2 months just to receive a letter...so now another 2 months delay...

2 friends of mine have recently gone through minor car accident claims whereby they were not at fault, the other party admitted liability (in one case) and both had their insurance companies appoint lawyers at the beginning. over 2 years for one, 18 months for the other...

No bike insurance company I looked into said they would insure my bike either so that wasn't an option, although to be fair I'm not sure if I would have signed up to one if they had, given the parastic yearly costs of insurance, and the risk of premiums being affected if in an accident; this was the first cycling incident I've ever been involved with in my entire life of cycling so the costs of insurance would have been significant if I'd have taken out insurance when I first started cycling...

I am annoyed at myself that I didn't think about asking on this forum earlier though, so thank you to those that helped!

Argos74 wrote:

Neither. The insurer who indemnifies them for 3rd party damages. Pursue them. Who the driver was is the insurer's problem.

Hi Argos74,

I contacted the lawyers again today; they finally told me who to state as the defendant in this case and you were right, the insurance company; however not the insurance company who I have dealt with uptil now, but the company who owns the insurance company as they are under the umbrella...I have asked both the insurance company and the lawyers this question on several occasions before but they have refused to clarify until today; bizarre; looks like delaying tactics to me; sad state of affairs...