"The physical evidence will show that the front of your car hit the side of hers thus its your fault."

Hm. It's the word "thus" that bothers me. It implies there is a logical conclusion to be drawn between the two parts of the sentence.

Just because the front of one car hits the side of the other there is no reason to assume the fault lies with the former.

The crucial factors are the positions of the two vehicles at the point of collision, relative to the road, and the movements of both just prior. As Skidpan says, evidence is needed, in the form of witnesses and/or dashcam footage. (And possibly any skidmarks and the damage to the tree etc.)

If the events were exactly as described by the OP he is in the clear; the problem is proving it.

(I must add that alternative explanations are not going to sound plausible, e.g. the OP's car was driving past on what appeared to be an overtake, but inexplicably pulled to the left into one of the cars being overtaken.)

Edited by FP on 03/02/2016 at 11:01

I am hoping that the physical evidence will show that the damage to the front left hand corner of my car and the rear right hand corner of her car along with skid marks on the road will show that I was pulled out into and attempted to brake to the best of my ability.

The only issue is she was knocked unconcious at the time of the accident. I am hoping she sees sence when talking to the insurance / police and tells the truth.

I think it should go to my advantage I have been driving almost 4 years with no accidents and she was 18 and been driving a few months.

I wouldn't like to say how this will pan out, there are hundreds of possible scenarios to consider here and unless a credible (skilled and fair minded driver) independant witness comes forward, or you, the third party, or one of the other cars you overtook, happens to have a good quality dashcam and submits the footage and its worth viewing, then i agree with the others that proportioning blame will be difficult and could go any way.

As a general comment not just this scene, overtaking a line of cars, preumably in the dark, can be a hazardous affair, not helped by the constantly increasing blinding effect of lights all around, if you put yourself in the other drivers position for a moment, you're unsure of the road and possibly trying to peer round a slow moving vehicle to overtake it (yes i know most people follow too close and lose field of vision but this is dumbed down Britain where one size fits all), so eventually you see a space and maybe glance in the mirror, indicate and start to pull out, which is fine unless a massive speed differential is thrown into the mix.

Several things contribute here, even if you were indicating, far too many cars have indicators too close to the headlights, in some cases you have a job to see them at all if you catch the edge of the headlight beams where colours flash, and this would be the case as the edge of your beams hit her door mirror, but never let safety and common sense get in the way of fashion eh designers... and many modern headlights which if you happen to catch the edge of the beam have a prism/spectrum effect which again helps to cancel out what should be easily seen indicators if they'd been sited away from the headlights as they used to be.

Then and this is where things have gone wrong IMO, i make no criticism here because i am one who takes little notice of speed limits whilst actually overtaking on a 2 way road...time exposed to danger and all that...you make special mention of being at or below the speed limit for the road, that tells me you were possibly doing up to 60 as you passed, now i have no argument with that sort of overtaking speed difference when one vehicle is being passed, but a 35mph difference past a line of cars might be considered risky in the cold light of dawn depending upon visibility due to the possible danger of what actually did happen (and a good driver would be expecting this to happen), if our young lady driver glanced in her mirror she could easily pull out on you at a 35mph speed differential any average driver could be forgiven for not expecting...as i say i'm not criticising you because i wasn't there and neither was anyone else bar the vehicles involved at the time, but you can see just from those points alone how there are so many ways this could be looked at.

One other thing, i hope your headlights are legal and no extra lights were in use.

Edited by gordonbennet on 07/02/2016 at 10:39

they have decided the other driver is at fault as they pulled out into my path. They have recomended her be placed on a driver improvement scheme rather than be prosecuted.

Presume "they" is the Police.

After my earlier scepticism I'm happy to put on record my satisfaction that the situation has turned out well for the OP.

Presumably the insurance company will now fall into line.