Title: Cop car ran red and hit me

Date: 31 August 2011

Question

Could somebody advise me if I should be accepting a 50/50 settlement?

I approached a junction and went through an amber light. A police car came from the left, but could not see me. It ran a red light because it was on an emergency call. We collided in the junction and I flipped over the car and landed on the road. Luckily I had no injuries, and at first the police accepted full responsibility. But later on, they went for a 50/50 settlement and I do not think this is fair as they were the ones who went through a red light.

The witnesses have said I was sticking to the speed limit, and so was the police car.

The police have also said there are about 6-10 witness statements but only gave two of them to my insurance company. After reading them, my insurance company want to go 50/50 and have not even attempted to obtain all of the statements to gather a full understanding of the accident from all perspectives. What can I do?

Yosh89 from MCN Insurance Forum

Answer

As with all these cases the result will be fact specific and as such to give a proper opinion I would need to see all the witness evidence and f there is some, the CCTV footage. However there are some basic rules that apply in such circumstances and there is a lot of case law involving accidents with emergency vehicles that assist in providing a view.

Firstly if the amber light is illuminated, a vehicle must stop, unless it has already passed the white stop line or the vehicle is so close to the stop line, that coming to a halt might cause an accident. Therefore your exact position and speed will be relevant factors.

Secondly, the Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2002 reg.36(1)(b) allow an emergency vehicle to treat a red light as a give way signal. Clearly the police driver is still under a duty to take reasonable care of other road users. However in this case I think you will be subject to a portion of the blame due to not noticing the sirens/lights and running an amber light. The exact apportionment is difficult to assess without specific evidence of your exact position and witness statement consideration but I can see why your insurer is willing to settle at 50/50. If it was a valuable case involving significant injury clearly they would d be investing more money in precisely establishing liability.

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