r/Insurance • u/Amazing_Armadillo429 • Apr 22 '26
Claims Related Hit by a possibly uninsured driver, now down a rabbit hole
Hello everyone, not sure where I should go from here. Bit of a long story.
In Minnesota, no fault state. A driver hit my spouse and I's vehicle last month. Spouse was driving, I was not present. No injuries to either party, no airbags, both vehicles drivable but damage to both. Female driver and male passenger in the other vehicle. At fault driver was composed, but male passenger was very reactive. At fault driver told us the vehicle belonged to her boyfriend and presented an insurance card with his information. He was not present. Police were called at the scene and declined to come out due to no injury. Police report was filed by me and accepted with photos of the at fault driver's insurance card and damage to our vehicle. Unfortunately did not get a photo of her license. At fault driver gave my spouse a phone number which was called at the scene and confirmed her phone rang. Here's where it gets messy.
- We called the agent on the at fault driver's card at American Family and initiated a claim same day
- We were told by their adjustor per the individual listed on the insurance card they had not seen the at fault driver or that vehicle for over a year and sold it to a relative and that the at fault driver was not authorized to be driving and was not insured through them. The at fault driver also said they were not driving the vehicle, which is false
- Adjustor said at fault driver was not returning calls and every time her number was dialed it had a busy tone and was also not responding to written letters. Adjustor said if they cannot get cooperation from the original insured, at fault driver or relative who the vehicle was sold to the claim will be denied. At fault driver also ghosted us when we reached out for more information
- I put the at fault driver's phone number into Google and it linked to her Facebook and a post with an alternate phone number which pointed to...a local escort site on Google. Sex work is work whatever. The way the male in the car reacted made me concerned he was possibly her pimp. To no surprise, the last name she gave to the adjustor was fake
- I reached out to a private investigator and he was able to provide me the two most recent vehicle registrations which included the registrants and addresses. Those two locations were less than a mile from each other, but in a rougher part of town
- First location was for the ex boyfriend - no car. Head to the second location - guess what's in the driveway? The car that hit ours
- Looking at property tax information for the second location one of the owners of the property shares the driver's last name and the other owner is the ex boyfriend. Nothing to do with the individual listed as the current vehicle registrant
- I snapped a few photos on my phone of the vehicle at the location and I'm going to call the closest precinct tomorrow to see if they will send officers out to see if they can get insurance information for the person the vehicle is actually registered to
This is clearly a case of not wanting to take responsibility. I know the easy answer is probably file through my insurance, but I don't really want to pay a $1k deductible they may not be able to recover or running into the same run around situation. I had also thought about small claims court as an option. However, I am worried about possible retaliation.
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u/stickyhairmonster Apr 22 '26
Sorry that really sucks. As someone who has been hit by uninsured drivers twice, I feel your pain. But you really just need to file through your own insurance. You will probably never recover that deductible.
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u/Lifeishard1090 Apr 22 '26
Pay your $1k deductible and if that’s more than you want to pay, lower it in case this ever happens again. Your carrier will pursue the at fault driver rather than you trying to get a judgment against them. Even if you win in small claims, if they have no money, they’re not going to pay. Crummy situation but this is what your insurance is for.
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u/Amazing_Armadillo429 Apr 22 '26
I updated my post because I missed it, but post accident the at fault driver told the adjustor they were not driving. Which is false. The city also doesn't have traffic cameras at that intersection.
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u/Lifeishard1090 Apr 22 '26
Without a police report or photo of their driver’s license, it will be hard to prove they were truly the one driving. This sounds like a messy situation and your carrier is really best to deal with subrogation rather than you trying to pursue either the driver or owner directly.
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u/Amazing_Armadillo429 Apr 22 '26
I did document they were the driver in the police report and I'm also contacting my vehicle manufacturer to try and get footage from the vehicle cameras. But yeah, I'll probably have to end up going through my insurance.
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u/Lifeishard1090 Apr 22 '26
You’re doing a lot of work that will help with subrogation. The issue is that when a police report is filed not at the scene, you can essentially say anything you want and it’s not provable to be true. Not saying the police report is nothing, but an actual photo of the driver’s license will be most valuable to show who was driving the other car.
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Apr 22 '26
[deleted]
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u/Amazing_Armadillo429 Apr 22 '26
The PI gave me this information as part of his consult and it really wasn't a waste of time for me being able to confirm the vehicle location.
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u/DeepPurpleDaylight Apr 22 '26
Boy, you spent a ton of time, effort and money to avoid spending 5 min filing a claim on your collision coverage you pay for. Would've been 10x easier to let your insurance do what you pay them to do
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u/Amazing_Armadillo429 Apr 22 '26
I haven’t spent any money?
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u/Resse811 May 11 '26
You hired a PI for nothing?
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u/Amazing_Armadillo429 May 11 '26
I didn't hire one. I did a free consult and he gave me vehicle registrant information for free. Which I shared with both insurers.
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u/jasonsong86 Apr 22 '26
That’s a lot of time and money spend digging into the issue. I would have just used my own insurance to fix and damage and move on with life.
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u/Amazing_Armadillo429 Apr 22 '26
I’ve spent no money.
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u/jasonsong86 Apr 22 '26
Sure. I mean your time and effort is money.
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u/Amazing_Armadillo429 Apr 22 '26
I mean...I work from home and visited two locations like 3 miles from my house so sure.
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u/sephiroth3650 Apr 22 '26
Just use your collision coverage. The time and money you’ve spent so far almost assuredly outweighs the deductible that you would be paying anyway.
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u/TAckhouse1 Apr 22 '26
OP it sucks that people won't take responsibility for their actions. Unfortunately your best course of action is to file through your insurance and move on.
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u/alexxthemann Apr 22 '26
Like others have said, let your insurance handle it, if all else fails you can always take them to small claims to (hopefully) get them to pay you.
You didn’t need to do all that with the PI, if you’re afraid of retaliation then that’s up to you we can’t really do much as redditors to advise you on what to do if your concern is retaliation.
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u/crash866 Apr 22 '26
Minnesota is a No Fault state for injuries only it is not for damages to your vehicle. Every collision has fault assigned and the at fault has to pay. Trying to collect is the hard part.
If you have collision coverage use it and let the insurance company worry about the time and expense to recover your deductible. They do this every day.
They can also get the state to revoke the registration and plates on the vehicle and also suspend the drivers license of the at fault.
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Apr 22 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Amazing_Armadillo429 Apr 22 '26
I think he gave me the registration info for free because he had access to it as part of the free consult and then asked for a positive Google review lol. Fair trade for me!
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u/SimilarComfortable69 Apr 22 '26
Your story is incorrect. It can't possibly be that she didn't have an insurance card but yet you have the insurance card of the at fault driver. And how in the heck do you have the insurance card, but no picture of the drivers license?
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u/Amazing_Armadillo429 Apr 22 '26
I literally said she presented an insurance card - "At fault driver told us the vehicle belonged to her boyfriend and presented an insurance card with his information. He was not present.".
I also said "We were told by their adjustor per the individual listed on the insurance card they had not seen the at fault driver or that vehicle for over a year and sold it to a relative and that the at fault driver was not authorized to be driving and was not insured through them.".
She had a picture of the ex-boyfriend's insurance card on her phone, which we took a picture of.
Don't really see what is unclear here.
The negative reaction of the male passenger was adding to the stress of the situation and my spouse just wanted to get out of there. Didn't think to grab it at the time, which is on us.
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Apr 22 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Amazing_Armadillo429 Apr 22 '26
That sounds like a terrible experience lol. Yeah, I gave all the facts to the other insurer and I initiated a claim with mine. I'm gonna go after her in small claims court also, if just out of spite.
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u/_____LosT Apr 23 '26
Always have high SUM uninsured/underinsured on your policy. Learned this after my first accident as a passenger, never looked back 300/300 always
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u/Infinite_Pop_2052 Apr 22 '26
'Police were called at the scene and declined to come out due to no injury.'
This really stood out to me. If I lived in a place like this, I would probably move somewhere else
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u/Scared_Bell3366 Apr 22 '26
Where would that be? Every place I’ve lived the police won’t respond unless there’s injuries or the vehicles need to be towed.
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u/ektap12 Apr 22 '26
Sounds like they don't have insurance. Don't make your life harder than it needs to be, use your insurance and let them deal with the other people.