Be Excellent To Each Other

You should come and see me really, cause I'm the acest personal injury solicitor guy but I don't really get involved in low level RTA stuff at the moment. Anyhoo let me give you some advice on CCTV footage:

1) Do not leave obtaining CCTV footage to a Claims Management Company or Solictor. YOU DO IT. YOU DO IT NOW. They'll be too slow to even make the effort to get hold of it (they'll submit your claim on a portal, wait for a response etc etc) by which time it will have been destroyed. Most CCTV footage is destroyed within 28 days. It cannot be understated how important CCTV footage is to all disputes.

2) Who to contact? Well, you could try the police who, as I understand it, might operate some CCTV in some areas but your best bet is speaking with the local Council. They will more likely operate it and put a stopper on destroying the footage. DO THIS NOW. Speak to their spazzy departments (you might need some patience as you'll have to go through many many different people before you get the person you actually need) and ask them what you need to do to get hold of the footage. It'll be most likely a Freedom of Information Request. Some Councils have a form - do they, where is the form? Get the name and contact details of the polite and helpful person on the other end of the phone for future reference. Send them an email thanking them for their help AND REQUESTING THAT THEY DO NOT DISPOSE OF THE FOOTAGE. Now, do exactly what they told you to do to request the footage and do it today!

Enjoy!

The missus is currently talking to the council. They *do* have a camera, but in an effort to not have to actually do any work, they tried talking her out of actually trying to acquire the footage as it 'probably won't have caught it anyway'. She's a stubborn bugger though, so she's already going through supervisors and so on, stating that we're entitled to the footage due to the Data Protection Act (a Police Sergeant mate of mine told me this - she's checked and confirmed it's true). So: fingers crossed!

Be wary of claims management companies.
A lot won't want to know at all if it's less than a sure-fire outcome, and some have been known to leave you liable for ridiculously inflated hire car charges if the other party ends up not being held responsible.

Excellent work. Don't let them fob you off and back up your requests IN WRITING (an email to the people in the know will probably suffice).

Well, my girlfriend spoke to the council - apparently the camera was facing the wrong direction to capture anything. It was turned the correct way after the emergency services arrived, but not before.

It's a really bad junction and I'm wondering if it's possible to get statistics for accidents that have happened there? No idea where I'd get such information from however.

As for the claims management idea, that's a no go as liability is being contested. They're only interested if it's a clear cut incident.

I don't buy that. You don't necessarily need to see lights in the video - if the road you were travelling on was two lanes going in your direction, for example, you could check to see if cars in the other lane to the one you're in have stopped or are slowing down, which would suggest that the light was red when you went through it.

If the cars in the other lane are moving freely, clearly you had a green light.

Similarly, if there are no cars coming from the direction of the idiot, that would strongly suggest that her lights were on red.

Pointing the other way?? What away from the junction? I don't get this, it must have been pointing at a road, what is the traffic in the road it is pointing at doing? Also, the timing of the lights will be known; were you filmed going through any other lights nearby that can show the timing of your journey?

It's hold onto your hat time here. Have just received first questioning from mother as to if I am inviting my brother to our wedding, to which I have replied no, and given my reasons.

I foresee a veritable poostorm is about to head in from the west. I feel a bit nauseous. On my week off, too

I wasn't sure if it would happen, or if it would be quietly understood. But it looks like it is going to be spelled out.

Sorry to hear that. Good luck.

Thank you x

I agree with all this. Who are they to say whether the footage is relevant or not? It might not show the accident but it might assist the dispute greatly.

Mimi, the important thing is to do what you both want, not anyone else...

Malc

They're saying that if we want whatever footage there is, they would need to digitally mosaic out all the faces of anyone who isn't us, like the emergency services people, and that that would take time and a lot of money that they'd charge us.

We are thinking about speaking to the local paper about the number of accidents there - we found a council report that suggested it was something of a blackspot.

Fucking councils. I'm no lawyer but if the CCTV is in a public place, surely they don't have to do that as there's no expectation of privacy?

I really think thats a 'why dont you go away and not bother me' answer and my immediate response at the time would be 'can you give me costings for that' - because if someone has to actually go and work out how much to charge then they need to do work and then might actually realise they can give it over for free

(my other comment would be that they release that to the police rather than you and i'd love to see them argue with the police service that they need to mosaic out the faces :-)

What is the actual point of the camera if it's not this sort of thing?

To catch evil pedophiles. And evil terrorists. And other people threatening the freedom of our great country.

A buddy of mine used to work for the CCTV coverage in Bedford - he sat and watched screens all night long.

His response was "hahahaha bollocks - people have no right to be disguised if they're in a public place. Keep calling them until they do what they're fucking told."

I'm sure they've got no right to be disguised if it's used for official purposes - but I have a feeling it differs if the council are handing over the footage to an individual party. I suspect getting them to hand it directly to the police is probably a good route to go down.

Just spoke to the missus - apparently the CCTV camera in question is actually for the car park next to the junction and spends it's days filming the aforementioned car park. They can turn it to face the junction if requested to do so by the authorities, which they were on that night, but obviously not until the accident had already happened. So genuinely there's nothing of use in the footage. There are no CCTV cameras at the junction itself.

We're going to take a wander down to that junction when we get time to see if there are any other cameras around that may have caught it. The road leading to that junction divides a new retail centre and a massive block of relatively posh flats, so there may be something.

Look on Street View.

This was my view coming down towards the lights. I was in the far right lane, the car park with the CCTV is on the left and the other car was facing towards us at the filter light, trying to turn to their right towards that car park. I can't really make out any cameras on this.

Oh, that junction. Yeah, that one's a bastard - I've actually had a couple of people pull in front of me while I've been there, but mercifully I've had more time to avoid them.

Can you see any other CCTV cameras on the street view?

It's a bastard alright. The problem is simple, if you're waiting at a red light at the filter to turn right and suddenly it goes amber, then green you automatically think "time for me to go!" and off you trot, straight into the path of still oncoming traffic. The light going green only means you can go if safe to do so, there's a filter light underneath the green light that you can wait for. To me, it's clear that she went on the green light, not on the filter light.

My gf's insurance still seemed to think we had a good case, bearing in mind how the lights are set up there - but if the other party starts claiming they went on the filter light, not the green, I guess we're going to have trouble. Like I say, I *know* that our light was definitely green as we passed and we definitely had right of way, not her. There's just seemingly no way of actually proving this.

Technically, a green light only ever means "go if safe to do so".

"Proceed if clear" is the actual wording, I believe.

Grim... is right. If they were queued up to turn right after the white line, then they can reasonably expect for cars who are coming towards them to wait, even if the light has turned green.

You should be ok, I would have thought. As without any other evidence, then the other person pulled into your path, which is very much a no-no, even if their light was on green. A green light doesn't absolve them of the need to be observant and think.

You do have a lawyer though, don't you?

Yeah, they pulled in front of you - they're the ones that changed direction into the path of another motorist.

Just dealing with the CCTV footage from the Council I think their comments are a load of old bollocks. I'd do a Freedom of Information Act request regardless of what you're being told. There's no reason to blank out faces (seriously, what a load of shit) and it still could assist. For example, if you know the time when the accident happened and can see the traffic lights in the footage you could probably work out the timings of the lights and roughly what colour they'd be on for whom at the time of the incident working backwards.

Here's the form to fill out from the council and where to send it: http://www.dacorum.gov.uk/home/council- ... on-request

Notwithstanding the above, checking with local shops and whatnot is a great idea if you've got the time.

Hi Zio. Again, sucks that all this awful keeps coming your way.

Our boss keeps wanting me to photograph lots of people in big crowds for events. And then when I can't get all of them to sign a form before they've naturally melted away in the crowd to do other things there's a panic and I'm requested to blur faces, despite a crowd full of blurred faces looking completely stupid.

This is at its most annoying when during a special storytime there's one kid whose parent's won't give permission, forcing me to do some spectacularily tricky angles or suffer a weird flesh-face amidst the happy chiddlers. Councils seem desperately paranoid about people being photographed in case they get sued over something.

I am fairly certain you are only required to blur the faces of children if the photo was taken in a public place.

My amazon account has been hacked and the email address changed.

Despite me being able to give them full details of every order I've placed for years including delivery addresses, what ive bought and exact times, payment methods, phone numbers and so on, because I don't know what the email address is now they won't lift a finger to help.

They did kindly suggest I create a new account though.....

Shower of cunts!

That's a nightmare! Did they hack anything else? It's worrying that something like that can be hacked without a backdoor of some kind.

Grumble, piss and moan. My gf spoke to a nice man at her insurance company yesterday that told her we had a pretty concrete case and that she was worrying far too much, that it was obvious what had happened in the accident and there's no way this will go 50/50 or anything, the other party is clearly liable. He was so confident he then put her through to another company called CCL, who would sort her out a loan car and begin dealing with her personal injury claim. CCL apparently only get involved when they know they're getting their costs back from the other party's insurance. So all was looking good.

Then CCL called her and they told her our case is anything but concrete and that there's a significant chance we will lose or have to go 50/50, and as such there's no way they're supplying her with a loan car and they are not going to do anything about this personal injury claim. Unless we can find evidence from somewhere that categorically proves our light was green when we passed, they will do absolutely nothing.

The insurance have told her they will not even begin the process of ordering her a new car for at least 3 more weeks whilst extra checks are done. Even then, the whole ordering and registration process of getting a brand new car will happen - so it's going to be at least 2-3 months before she has a car. She goes back to work on Thursday. Things continue to seem a bit fucked.

I'm pretty sure I'd have used that combination of email address and password in other places, so that may have been where "they" got it from, but Amazon *should* have sent me a notification message when my email address was updated which they didn't. That makes me more than a little suspicious.

I ended up phoning back the next day and got a different droid who did exactly what the first ones should have done and escalated it to their fraud team.
They cancelled the fraudulent orders that had been placed, reset the email and password and I'm now back in.

I sent off a formal complaint about this to customer services and got a bland copy and paste reply back which ended with "Your feedback is helping us build Earth's Most Customer-Centric Company." so they can still fuck off.

I've left my PS4 pre-order in place as that's the only way I'll get one for launch day, but won't be placing any more orders with them.

Damnit, Zoidberg. Don't you care about the giant mountain clock Bezos is building?

I remember when Mimi used to be funny.

She still is, but mainly when she's drunk.

So now the other party in our accident has a 'witness' that apparently saw us drive through a red light and hit their car. Fucking amazing. I wish I could afford some top solicitor to take the lying fuckbag to court and show her up to be the lying sack of shit she clearly is, but alas, I don't.

Fuck everything at the moment, seriously.

One thing to do is try and find out who the witness is and see if they happen to be "Friends".. facebook, linked in, etc. Happened to a friend once where the witness of the other guy happened to be his best man.

Yeah, we'll have to see if we can find a name for this apparent witness. We're trying again to get hold of the police that attended the scene and their report, as they interviewed all the witnesses that were present.

Zoo really sorry to hear all this.
A police officer recommends attending the scene and filming other drivers behaviours at these lights including the green light before the filter light.
Speak to your insurance company and insist they review the full police report to see there is no witness like the one now being brought in who was interviewed at the scene. How exactly do the insurance company explain how she met this person so long after the accident?!
Ask the police for details of accident rates at those lights in the last year.
I wish there had been a camera there, this sucks so much.

doesn't your insurance company provide legal cover?

I don't wish to sound rude, but shouldn't the insurers do everything as that is what you paid them for?

They should, but at this rate we're going to be found liable for an accident that absolutely was not our fault. It impacts us in other ways too - if the other party had admitted liability, my girlfriend would have a loan car for instance and her insurance would be processing her personal injury claim. As the other party are now saying we're at fault for causing the accident, they're doing none of this.

My girlfriend works in the motor trade and her employer are giving her one of their cars for Thursday and Friday this week, but how the fuck she's meant to get to work after that we've currently got no idea. My dad is desperately trying to get an old Rover through an MOT for her to use, but there's loads wrong with it so we've got no idea if that's going to happen yet.

Make the insurance folks sort it, chase them every day.

They will do there best as they don't want to pay out,

AH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA. Seriously, that's hilarious.

So far, the default position of the insurance company has been to do the absolute barest minimum possible in absolutely the slowest time possible.

I would chase them every day. Does your policy not provide a courtesy car?

Sorry been 7 years since I had car insurance

This is the aggravating bit - my girlfriend signed up for her insurance via GoCompare. This is actually a screen grab from when she signed up with them - she went for the top deal in this picture:


When it sent her through to the Allianz site, the only thing she changed was that she added legal assistance to the cover.

So you'd think they'd supply a courtesy car, right?

Apparently not. There is no courtesy car cover on her policy. She showed them this image and they basically shrugged and said that was GoCompare's error, not theirs. We can complain apparently, but this will ultimately make no difference.

It's not been a fun time lately.