Poor service from the police.

[Sara_H]

You're half right...

It was poor from the police to not go out at an early stage and see the other drivers car, making some preliminary enquiries as well.

However, writing a letter to the driver is standard fare. You should expect the registered keeper to be sent a notice informing him that he by law has to name the driver of the car at the time of the incident. If he fails to do so he gets charged with a separate offence of failing to do this (Gaz has had someone charged with this if I recall correctly). The registered keeper has a maximum of 28 days to reply, which we can do nothing to speed up. I suspect this is the letter they have been sent.

I'd recontact the officer in charge of your case to tell them the update that the driver has claimed he didn't crash into you, as this in itself puts him in the drivers seat. He'll then get interviewed about it. If he goes with the 'I didn't notice' line of argument, which is common, this isn't the same as him swearing it didn't happen and things normally turn out in favour of the reportee.

The bad news is that if he really has a witness willing to lie for him, then it's not looking good - unless of course there's some definitive proof that shows them to be lying (CCTV best, independent witness not quite as good). If CCTV showed them to be lying they could be prosecuted with attempting to pervert the course of justice. Without this, our criminal justice system has always been weighted in favour of those willing to lie under oath on the presumption that people won't.

Unfortunately, you are going to see this more and more in the current climate, especially for non injury RTCs. The frontline cuts (that haven't happened officially of course, despite the fact my shift is down from 45 officers to 25 now...) mean that quite often we're only just treading water attending the serious jobs with a threat to life/limb, so the odds of getting someone free on the day to attend more minor incidents is unlikely. Write to your MP as suggested above.

What rankles about your last paragraph is, when I went to the station to present my documents there was a problem with my insurance certificate - a clerical error on the part of my insurance company meant that my car wasn't showing up on the database - I was interviewed under caution and spent several hours in the company of the police officer - I'd done nothing wrong, I'd injured no one, I'd caused no trouble what so ever, but I guess I was seen as a sitting duck.

The problem with my insurance certificate is now sorted, but, the officer certainly had time to deal with that (and caused me a great deal of distress into the bargain) but didn't apparentltly have time to go and see someone who had crashed into someone and then left the scene of the accident.

 

[CopperCyclist]

What rankles about your last paragraph is, when I went to the station to present my documents there was a problem with my insurance certificate - a clerical error on the part of my insurance company meant that my car wasn't showing up on the database - I was interviewed under caution and spent several hours in the company of the police officer - I'd done nothing wrong, I'd injured no one, I'd caused no trouble what so ever, but I guess I was seen as a sitting duck.

The problem with my insurance certificate is now sorted, but, the officer certainly had time to deal with that (and caused me a great deal of distress into the bargain) but didn't apparentltly have time to go and see someone who had crashed into someone and then left the scene of the accident.

For them to take several hours for that was excessive, but that's an aside.

In that case I'm back with you. An error in insurance documents HAS to be checked, as most of the time it's not an 'error' it's an uninsured driver - which you aren't of course - but that's why that has to be checked. As you say though, if the officer that dealt with you had time to do that, they they weren't assigned to any other job, and they could have spent another half hour checking the other car.

 

[Sara_H]

And I appreciate he was just doing his job, BUT on my way home from a nightshift I'd made a 999 call to report an accident where the driver had left the scene, then presented my documents at the police station an hour later - hardly the actionsof someone who'd intentionally driven without insurance. I was in the police station from around 10am to 14.00.

As I said, it really rankles taht he spent all those hours interrogating me, but no timeat all making enquiries into the idiotwho crashed into me.