Hello

After a long period of being without a car, I decided to take the plunge and buy a little runaround for myself. Recently had put in a brand new steering pump and was really enjoying being back on the road again.

Then, while I was at work, some muppet in an old BMW decides to drive into the back of it outside a police patrol base of all places. He claimed that this was because he was forced to swerve to avoid a head on collision with another driver.

To be fair, both he and the other driver stopped and had already given their insurance details to the police(who only had to stroll over the road in order to attend) by the time I turned up, having left work. So far so good.

So I get the car recovered to the local Mini Dealer which is round the corner from my workplace.

I notified my insurer the same evening for 'information purposes only'. I then get onto the third party(i.e the bloke who hit my car) insurer. They take the details and get back to me stating that their policyholder holds the other driver responsible and to contact the other driver's insurer to organise repairs for my car. Naturally no-one's open after 5pm.

Does anyone have any advice as to where I stand with this? I mean, as far as I'm aware it's the BMW driver who's hit my car. He's caused the damage. So why are the other driver's insurer going to pay for repairs when their policyholder didn't actually hit my car?

What I don't want is to be stuck with a car that's not being repaired because two idiots who weren't paying attention(trust me - if you saw where this accident occurred, there was absolutely no excuse to be going so fast that you can't stop regardless who's ultimately to blame) are arguing the toss about liability.

As far as I'm concerned, I'm the only blameless party, so what should I do? Should I try to pursue matters with the other driver's insurer direct? Or just let a claims management company deal with things(I've already rebuffed attempts to foist an expensive hire car on me - thanks in no small part to the excellent advice I've seen on the boards here)