We totalled the car!
May 23rd, 2007 | 
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It was bound to happen sooner or later of course. French drivers driving tractors on a road where 100km/hour is sometimes far too slow for the people behind.
Anyway, we were tootling along this morning at quite a low speed as we’d just left the village, slowed down even more as there was oncoming traffic, moved out to overtake the tractor in front and, of course, he decided that was the time to turn (naturally without indicating that he was planning on doing it).
So we are sans voiture at the moment and likely to be so for a while I suspect if insurance claims move along at the usual pace of French administration.
Fortunately the insurance covers us for a replacement car so we’re picking up a rental car tomorrow afternoon.
Given the level of damage (both sides nicely smashed in, roof caved in, windscreen and side window broken, some wheels punctured and broken, plus it looks like the axle ain’t straight either), I think we’re talking write-off but we’ll know better after the assessor sees the car (possibly later today).
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Good photo! Hope you both get out unscathed.
When we had a similar incident a few years ago the insurance paid out quite quickly…but they said our car could be repaired so didn’t need replacing.
This was a bad thing. Ever since it has had niggling troubles with doors that don’t shut so well and strange mechanical faults that I think were due to the accident but weren’t clear at the time.
Funnily enough in our incident it wasn’t the crash itself that most damaged the car – it skidded off a wet road and leaped across a deep ditch pretty unscathed – but the repair lorry dragging it back through the ditch to retrieve it ripped off bumpers and lights etc in the process.
Arnold, the main thing is that no-one was injured. It seems to many drivers that indicators are an unnecessary addition to their vehicles, but then there are those drivers who signal incorrectly, especially at roundabouts.
The combination of cheap car plus lots of damage almost certainly means write-off. The insurance people spoke to the garage yesterday and that was the verdict then but the assessor is supposed to be going to see the car sometime today.
Don’t know what happens re payout on a write-off though. I’ve heard from some quarters that they only pay out the equivalent of the value of the car given it’s age ie not enough to replace it. Even though the car is only two years old that would mean a shortfall of a few thousand euro before you even consider the excess.
You should see French drivers on a big roundabout Karen. There’s a large one near us and with the way they drive round it I’m amazed that there’s not a permanent collection of smashed up cars surrounding it.
I thought that if the accident was not your fault that you could claim the excess plus any difference in what it costs to replace car from the “guilty” party’s insurance.
I’ve driven in France a few times i think that driving standards have fallen so much in the UK that there’s not such a difference in driving style between the UK and France as 15 years ago.
You certainly did a number on that 😮
Certainly the payout in the UK is based on current market value, which is why dealers try to sell you ‘Gap insurance’ – If you crashed your car 5 days after leaving the showroom, the payout almost certainly wouldn’t cover the outstanding finance bill.
If you think the French are bad, you want to try Aberdeenshire….
Haven’t had the definitive figures as yet but unofficially the amount likely to be paid out won’t be nearly enough to let us afford another car. Unlike in the UK, we don’t even have the option of borrowing sufficient to cover the difference.
If that turns out to be the case we will be making it our task in life to ensure that the tractor driver has his license revoked as it should have been some time ago. This is someone who admitted to neither signalling nor looking, who left the scene of an accident and who appears to regularly need his daughter to handle things for him as he isn’t “all there”.