What To Do If Your Car Is Damaged And You Do Not Know Who Caused It?
If you are in a regular type of car accident, it is not usually hard to know who caused the accident, and whoever caused it generally pays the bills for it. But, what if you are in an accident or your car is damaged while it is parked, and you do not know who caused the damage? This is when it can get tricky with filing a claim, and here are a few things you should know about this.
Ways This Can Happen
There are several ways you can experience damage to your vehicle and not know who did it. One way is if your car is parked at your home, work, or somewhere else, and you come out to see it was vandalized. When this occurs, it is hard to know who did it unless you can get surveillance footage that captures the incident on tape.
Another way you can experience damage without knowing who did it is through a hit and run car accident. This is the type of car accident that involves one driver fleeing the scene after it takes place. Unless you were able to write down the license plate number, it can be very hard to find out who the other driver was.
What You Can Do
If you experience any type of damage like this, there are several things you can do. First of all, if the damage was caused by vandalism, and if you have comprehensive insurance coverage, you could file a claim with your own company and receive money to fix your car. Comprehensive insurance covers theft and vandalism, which means you would not have to know who caused the damage in order to receive compensation.
If you were in a hit and run, settling the accident becomes difficult. One option is to use your own insurance for it but to do this, you would need to have collision coverage on your car. Collision coverage protects you no matter how the damage was caused on your vehicle, even if you caused it yourself. If you do this, you should encourage the police to seek out the other driver, though. If you can find the other driver, you could sue that person for the damages, and that person could also face criminal charges for fleeing.
Having the right coverages with your auto insurance can protect you from things like this. To update or change your policy, contact an auto insurance agent.
Share
