I've had a bit of an unfortunate incident with my car. No-one was hurt fortunately. What happened was I was driving down a steep hill and then all of a sudden my car hit a patch of snow and ice and just started to skid down. There was nothing I could do. As it slid down there was a car on a side road that was parked badly and had it's end sticking out. My car collided into the part of the car sticking out of the side road. Anyway, the police station wasn't far away from where it happened, so I went there to report it. It just so happens that the car was owned by a policeman who works there. He wasn't happy. He said he had only left it there temporarily whilst he got someone to move their jeep so he could park it properly. Who is actually liable here? Is it bad news for me?

What an unfortunate coincidence. I know nothing of cars, but the old, I only left it there for a minute excuse sounds fishy to me, surely why and how long it's been badly parked is of no consequence to you.

Hi Eska. I've taken pictures for evidence (on my phone) and there was someone else with me in the car, so I have support for how badly it was parked. The only thing is, I would have continued to just skid down and possibly regain control if the back end of his car hadn't been sticking out of the side road. The damage isn't too bad because the collision wasn't fast (I was just skidding down) but I'm hoping he doesn't try to claim on my insurance.

Oh dear - sorry to hear about this.
This is in not any kind of informed legal advice, just my opinion...
If you had simply run into the back of someone b/c of an icy road, as I understand it, your insurance would have to pay for it. It's an unfortunate accident but there we go, someone has to take responsibility and generally that's the person who was behind.
So the issue here is whether the car you ran into was illegally parked. Badly parked isn't going to make any difference - illegally parked might.
Several years ago my mum, normally a very careful and law-abiding driver, stopped on double yellow lines (to pick me up :$). A guy came out of a side road and ran into the back of her. But, because she had been illegally parked she had to cover the damage.
Of course, the added complication in your case is that it was a policeman!
Bearing this in mind I think any kind of challenge could get you into more trouble (not that I'm suggesting the police are corrupt, just that it's likely he knows every road rule and reg down to the finest detail, so perhaps best not to argue).
I think what I'd do is tread carefully. If the car was illegally parked, suggest that you might each like to pay for the damage to your own cars, or offer to make a partial contribution to cover the cost of repairs for him. If you're in any doubt you might just have to put up with his demands.
And I think it would be best not to admit liability at any stage. (i.e. if you offer to pay for some of the damage make clear it's a "good will" gesture, not an admission that you did anything wrong).

Any lawyers out there who can tell me if I'm talking rubbish?!

(PS - just checking - it was the policeman's personal car right? Not a policecar?)

hey Walminski,

am sorry to hear about your incident. at work i deal with a lot of these kind of claims but usually they are for personal injury. were you injured in any way? whiplash? even trauma is an injury - for instance if you are afraid to drive again. even the slightest injury will help here to make it a PI claim.

assuming the road in question is a public road, you can sue the local authority for not clearing up the snow on time. it doesn't matter whether the driver of the car was a policeman. what matters is that he was wrongly parked so that whether you were driving correctly or not you would have hit him. usually here you are required to do everything in your path to avoid this. which you did - because there was nothing you could do to stop your car because of the failure of the local authority. if the policeman has a claim, he should bring it against the local authority and not against your insurer. the local authority should have reasonably foreseen that cars would skid bumping into others if it did not clear the ice. its the policeman who should be worrying about being parked wrongly, not you.

what did you actually say at the police station? (DON'T ADMIT LIABILITY FOR THE ACCIDENT. this will be sufficient for the policeman to bring a claim against your insurer.) its not a bad idea to stop by your GPs to check that everything is ok. it could put you in good stead legally. (the photos will help alongside photos of any injuries.)

if PI fails, for lack of medical evidence, take it up as a traffic offence and have both the local authority (who did not provide a safe road to drive on) and the policeman (who was wrongly parked) as the people you are making a claim against. keyword: accept no liability. instead be the victim.:p

that's my view. any other lawyer?

i agree with Florence - because this policeman was illegally parked, he is the one who should be worried about paying for damage to your car. not you.

best of luck..

Jojo and Florence, thank you for your advice. I've actually written down what you've said on paper. I've spoken to the chap and he seems like he'd like to settle amicably, as he doesn't want to claim from his insurance and I don't want him to claim from mine. It's a bit premature but, I think, we might just be able to settle it amongst ourselves. I'm mindful of what you said, Florence about it becoming a serious legal matter because of the expense.

Jojo, I'm fortunate that I wasn't injured. I must have only hit his car at about 5 mph, so I won't need to make an injury claim.

Oh and yeah, it was the flippin' council's fault. They really should have gritted the road. Someone actually got in touch with them about it but they told him that he would need to ring the police to inform them, so that they could then get in touch with the council to do something about it. How convoluted and stupid is that?

Even if you do settle this between the two of you, I think you should let your insurance company know, stating that you are not making a claim, it is just for their information. Something I can't quite recall at the moment suggests that this is important. you don't want to find a bit down the line that the bump is more serious than either of you realise (cars now have crumple zones which may mean they look alright on the surface, but closer inspection shows there has been more damage) and the bill is larger than you thought, and might need a proper claim they could reject this as you have not informed them now ... you may want to check this out with someone who actually knows - or you could find that if the insurance company found out about this in the future, they could invalidate a more substantial claim because you failed to inform them. At the moment I'm sure there are loads of people who have had minor bumps and are paying for any damage themselves because of this bad weather so you would not be alone in taking this action. Although the council may be liable they could well use the length and severity of the weather as an excuse, many councils were advised to conserve stocks of grit and salt to maintain the major roads, so they would have a major line of defence - and you might find yourself in a major -costly battle,- and there is also the warning about making unnecessary journeys - they may contend that it wasn't.  Same with 'badly parked', it would be your word against theirs, especially as you were moving - and would therefore be expected to take avoiding action- even if road conditions made this impossible. I think you might as well consider it bad news, but it could have been a lot worse.