Forced off my bike by oncoming vehicle - Ouch

trivial_poursuivant

PBlakeney wrote:

Trivial poursuivant wrote:

How many parked cars? Were they all there from when the incident took place to the police counting them? Who entered the obstacle first? The car could have manoeuvred to pass them and be half way down before the cyclist approached. What does the driver say? He denies it. Until the OP tells us if he does ask for it then we won't know but from what we know I believe it would take a hell of a lot more to build a case.

All those unanswered questions, and yet you have a conclusion.
Strange.

Many of them the police report can't answer. They don't know who was where and when , if more cars came and went. Point I am making is things could have changed and a decent lawyer would highlight this.

pblakeney

Key question. How long between the accident and the police arrival?
In this hypothetically nonsense debate that will resolve nothing but kills time between adverts.

bendertherobot

OP, out of interest, how much, injury aside, are your losses so far?

Bear in mind you have absolutely nothing to lose whatsoever, apart from a bit of time and effort, in trying to make a claim from his insurers by writing letters etc.

the_cyclist_of_catan

bendertherobot wrote:

Trivial poursuivant wrote:

A Di plo ma. I was going to do a degree afterwards but decided to take s different career path. That was over 18 years ago and I'm glad I didn't follow one in law. But is still know it more than the majority of people who think they do.

What type of diploma? Generally the LPC, BPTC and GDL are referred to as such.

Who does a GDL THEN goes on to consider a degree? Last time I checked, the whole point of the GDL was that it covered the key parts of a qualifying law degree in just one year, allowing holders of bachelors' degrees in non-law subjects to access the BPTC/LPC. Although I was in year one of the BVC at the ICSL, if we're going to throw around acronyms.

Still, going back to the OP's topic, it certainly sounds like something most RTC PI firms would consider*.

* the few that exist who still do PI post FRCs, and who haven't switched to doing S11s (I'm sure most of which only exist to annoy me. Still, it gives me something to do these days).

trivial_poursuivant

The Cyclist of Catan wrote:

bendertherobot wrote:

Trivial poursuivant wrote:

A Di plo ma. I was going to do a degree afterwards but decided to take s different career path. That was over 18 years ago and I'm glad I didn't follow one in law. But is still know it more than the majority of people who think they do.

What type of diploma? Generally the LPC, BPTC and GDL are referred to as such.

Who does a GDL THEN goes on to consider a degree?

It depends where you intend specialising. I intended originally in contract law and the GDL is pretty general and contract law is a very broad area. I, with no undergraduate degree, would have found it very hard to find employment without doing a degree afterwards. In the end for various reasons I decided I didn't want to continue doing law and left it behind. I didn't want to spend another 2-3 years doing more studying even part time, which I possibly could have done with a law firm. I changed career, lots of people do. I'm actually glad I did beforehand and not after doing even more studies. It's easy to say a GDL is enough to enter law but in the real world it's very competitive and not as easy as it looks on paper.

Nezquick

Trivial poursuivant wrote:

PBlakeney wrote:

Trivial poursuivant wrote:

How many parked cars? Were they all there from when the incident took place to the police counting them? Who entered the obstacle first? The car could have manoeuvred to pass them and be half way down before the cyclist approached. What does the driver say? He denies it. Until the OP tells us if he does ask for it then we won't know but from what we know I believe it would take a hell of a lot more to build a case.

All those unanswered questions, and yet you have a conclusion.
Strange.

Many of them the police report can't answer. They don't know who was where and when , if more cars came and went. Point I am making is things could have changed and a decent lawyer would highlight this.

Trivial has a point about this accident and I can't say that he's wrong.

I am a lawyer, and have been defending accidents like this for nearly 20 years (on behalf of insurers) so I'm well placed to provide some input.

My view is at this stage, we simply don't have enough information to know whether the OP has a claim or not. The simple remedy to this (as suggested above) is that the OP tries to get a copy of the police report. This will cost him (£50-£100 depending on the force) but it should give a full breakdown as to why the police think the accident occurred. It will only be disclosed though once any prosecution is dealt with so, if the driver is being prosecuted for DWODC then the report won't be released. Importantly, the report will provide the driver's description of how he felt the accident occurred. You'd be surprised what people say to the police in a stressful situation like this and he may well have admitted fault to them. If he did, I wouldn't be surprised if he was being prosecuted, collision or no collision.

The contents of the police report will be crucial in allowing any "no win, no fee" solicitor to determine whether to take this one on or not. It's a contemporaneous report of what happened and much weight will be attached to the report by a Judge at trial (as will the evidence of both parties). The problem though is that there are no independent witnesses and the OP was confused post-accident due to his head injury. This won't help matters. However, to counter that, any driver who says that a cycle/car "came out of nowhere" (although we don't know the driver actually said that) will not be looked on favourably by a Judge. Cars/cycles don't come out of nowhere. They are there to be seen.

Nezquick

bendertherobot wrote:

OP, out of interest, how much, injury aside, are your losses so far?

Bear in mind you have absolutely nothing to lose whatsoever, apart from a bit of time and effort, in trying to make a claim from his insurers by writing letters etc.

I also agree with this. If you have his details, write to him with a Letter Before Action setting out why he is at fault and what your claim consists of and request that he passes the letter to his insurers for them to deal with.

He won't have any counter-claim (no damage to his car) so you don't have that to worry about. If his insurers accept the claim, they will refer you to a medical expert etc and deal with your losses directly.

Definitely worth a go.