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 careless to park a car on a road bend where drivers coming around the bend cannot see the vehicle till the last minute.
Your injured and your car is damaged, the parked car is unattended and so you think “it must be my fault, you can’t sue a parked car!”
Are you at fault for hitting a parked car?
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.
But hold on a minute…
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 and drove into a parked car that you feel was parked in a dangerous or “stupid” place, then contact us here at The Injury Lawyers as we might be able to help you claim for compensation for your injuries and other losses.
