subject: Parking Prangs [print this page] There is nothing worse than leaving the car in the car park for an hour t the shops, and coming back to find that someone has bumped into you and driven off, leaving you to foot the bill. But a whopping fifth of drivers say that they would flee the scene of the accident if the other driver wasn't there.
Prangs involving parked cars account for an estimated seven hundred thousand of the three point five million accidents that happen each year, with each victim paying an average of eighteen hundred pounds to repair their cars. Owners who make a Car Insurance claim risk losing their no claims bonus through no fault of their own, and end up paying a heavy excess charge for the privilege to reinsure.
And it may be that the costs are completely out, as many motorists do not claim on their insurance, but pay for the prangs to be fixed themselves to save ruining their no claims bonus. The research found that over eighty percent of these bumps happened on the street, with less than twenty percent happening in car parks.
Experts are warning that these figures are set to rise with more houses being built, and more people parking on the roads, and the trend is that people's consciences are allowing them to let others foot the bills.
In more than half the cases, people felt guilty and couldn't flee the scene, either waiting for the other driver to return, or leaving their insurance details attached to the windscreen on the car.
