How To Refuse A 50/50 Insurance Payout

[SixOne]

To drag up and old topic...

I'm now in exactly the same situation in that I was riding through London, filtering past stationary traffic when some impatient f****r chose to pull out wihtout indicating, skip past the traffic and into a junction up ahead. Neither myself nor I bike was badly damaged so we swapped insurance details and I told him not to worry, I'm not going to claim against him. I come home a week later to a letter from his insurance company, stating his claim for WHIPLASH against me for my 'dangerous overtake'. I must have been filtering at 15mph at the time but obviously in his statement I was speeding and not paying attention. He's also claimed I accepted responsibility at the side of the road, despite my exact words being "I do not accept responsibility for this".

My insurance has offered me a 50/50 settlement which means I loose my no claims and the b*st*rd get's his bogus whiplash claim. There is part of me which is wondering whether it was intentional, he pulled out, knocked me off and is now looking at a nice little pay-out for it. If anyone's strapped for cash on here, try pulling out infront of other motorbikes, their insurance will give you a nice litle sum for you're troubles.

I've told them I'm not accepting 50/50 but I'm not sure how far I can go before I have to just give up and accept it? Can I just keep insisting it's not good enough? Thanks, Tim

[Jamz]

To drag up and old topic...

I'm now in exactly the same situation in that I was riding through London, filtering past stationary traffic when some impatient f****r chose to pull out wihtout indicating, skip past the traffic and into a junction up ahead. Neither myself nor I bike was badly damaged so we swapped insurance details and I told him not to worry, I'm not going to claim against him. I come home a week later to a letter from his insurance company, stating his claim for WHIPLASH against me for my 'dangerous overtake'. I must have been filtering at 15mph at the time but obviously in his statement I was speeding and not paying attention. He's also claimed I accepted responsibility at the side of the road, despite my exact words being "I do not accept responsibility for this".

My insurance has offered me a 50/50 settlement which means I loose my no claims and the b*st*rd get's his bogus whiplash claim. There is part of me which is wondering whether it was intentional, he pulled out, knocked me off and is now looking at a nice little pay-out for it. If anyone's strapped for cash on here, try pulling out infront of other motorbikes, their insurance will give you a nice litle sum for you're troubles.

I've told them I'm not accepting 50/50 but I'm not sure how far I can go before I have to just give up and accept it? Can I just keep insisting it's not good enough? Thanks, Tim

If he turned into a junction then you'll have a very tough fight on your hands, as there is case law against bikers in these circumstances (I think). Even then, the responsibility should still be on the driver to check it's clear to pull out - especially if you can prove traffic was stationary at the time. On that basis I don't think you'll ever get total non-fault, but you might be able to get a 70:30 deal in your favour...

If you d a search for the Bikers Legal Defence website I think it's got a load of diagrams illustrating every type of bike accident and what you can expect from it - have a look on that and see what it says.

I'd also STRONGLY recommend letting a specialist service such as BLD take over your case because the ones insurance co's get to fight for you as standards are absolutely useless at defending bikers! Good luck!

[Jamz]

Ooh, as another update to this thread - I won my case 100% in my favour but it took over 18 months! It never went to court and my insurance was insisting on me going 50:50 right up until the end. I felt they were no help whatsoever and I did all the work. I doubt very much I'd have been able to without the letter in my OP - so it does work!