Accidents with Parked Cars
Posted on July 9th, 2009 in Claims by Author
So your travelling along a small bendy road, driving appropriately for the conditions, when you turn a sharp bend and BANG you crash into a parked car.
How could you hit a stationary car you ask yourself? It wasn’t even moving!
Well, in your defence the parked was just carelessly ‘dumped’ smack bang on the bend and you have to be rather stupid to park a car on the bend of a road where drivers coming around the bend can not seethe vehicle till the last minute.
Your injured and your car is wrecked (ok, may be not wrecked, just slightly damaged), the car is parked and unattended and so I hear you think ‘ it must be my fault, you cant sue a parked car!’
Is it your fault? Well, on the face of it; it would appear so.
In an early case of Howells V Trefigin oil and Trefigin quarries limited, a cyclist was cycling round a bend when he went straight into the back of a lorry which was carelessly parked. The court found that the cyclist was 100% to blame for the accident. The judge in his reasoning felt that that a road user (the cyclist in this case) should take into consideration whilst driving, that there may be careless people out there who would leave their cars in stupid places and therefore found that the cyclist should have driven with more care when cycling around the bend.
However: in a later case of Waller V Levoi in very similar circumstances to the above case, the court held that the person who had carelessly left their car parked in a dangerous place, was also partly to blame because the Judge felt that parking on a bend was unwise .
So, The Law is not totally clear on the issue and the outcome may depend on the specific circumstances of your accident. There is also another case that I am aware of, where the Judge found the parked car was also to blame and in that case the driver had parked his lorry on a bend and was found to be 75% to blame for the accident so the driver recovered 75% of his compensation.
If you have been involved in an accident where you were driving around a bend or drove into a car you feel was parked in a dangerous or stupid place, (like on a bend) then you might be able to claim compensation for your injury and other losses.
