Accident while parallel parking
 

My fiancee's mother was in an accident this week while she was parallel parking. She was parking in between two cars on a small residential street in East Van when an impatient driver tried to go around her. Of course the streets are very skinny (I believe 8 meters width??), so he scraped the driver side of her car since she wasn't all the way into her space yet.

I was shocked when I heard that the ICBC rep told her that it is 100% her fault. I don't understand how that is an ICBC blanket statement. Something seems fishy here.

Does anyone have any precedent or experience with this type of accident in the past?

as you're parking you're supposed to always check 360 of your surroundings. sounds like she out of luck on this.

^true, but when you have already determined it is safe to park (since the driver behind was waiting already) and all of a sudden the driver decides to squeeze through and hits your car, wouldn't that be the othrr person's fault or at least 50/50? It's a single vehicle lane so isn't there a rule for having no more than one vehicle in the lane?

@Liquid_o2, usually what icbc does to determine at fault is look at previous similar cases and look at the Parking rules. From what i remember, if your pulling out of a parking on a curb and hit someone its your fault, if the person was speeding past you it can be 80/20 in their favor. But i don't see any rules or cases where you are parking at a curb and a restless person trying to squeeze through a tiny hole because they could not wait 60 seconds.

I would definitely fight it, give a proper depiction of what happened, explain the street layout and explain that the other person made an unsafe judgment and hit your car. That's if everything you say is how it went down. Mom's never like to admit being in the wrong or they can change their story to make it sound like they were the victim.

Or the other person outright lied about the situation.

I have a friend who was coming out of a parking spot and the person stopped to let him out and then hit him as we was coming out and claimed my friend didn't look and just came out.

ICBC said it was 100% his fault. He was lucky and was able to find a security camera recording and presented it to ICBC and they reversed the ruling as it clearly showed the other guy stopped to let my friend out first and then went and hit him as he was coming out.

DASH CAMS DASH CAMS DASH CAMS!!!!!

You either need a witness or appeal the judgement. ICBC has no problem making it 50/50 or whatever percentage since they profit both sides if nobodies pays out of pocket. :awwyeah:

Would need cameras on the driver's side in this case.

Thanks for the feedback guys. I wasn't there at the time, so all I can do is give advice!

I agree that if someone is already stopped and waiting for you to parallel park, and then they try and squeeze by, it should at least be 50/50. Hard to prove without any witnesses or dashcam footage! Luckily she hasn't had an at-fault accident in over 25 years so I don't believe her rates will be going up.

I had the same thing happen and I lost. ICBC's justification was I was going backwards into my spot but there wasn't much I could do. The person who hit me kept on going and my bumper carved up the car from the front wheel to the back wheel.

No, even with a front dashcam (or a 2ch front and rear) it would help prove if the car was already stopped behind or not. And at moment of impact, it would show the context of the 2 cars' positioning and what was occurring during the impact.


You don't know what the other side claimed, and with no witness or video evidence, it's a "he said/she said" scenario. I would think it's pretty simple. If your fiancee's mom is already in position and pulling back into the spot at 45 degree, then she has the right of way.

If the car truly tried to go around and misjudged the space, then he hit her.

She needs to check 360° surrounding after she has fully stopped and signalled, prior to backing up, to ensure a car isn't right on her tail and that she has room to back up. Assuming she did this, and didn't back up into the car behind, then she's not at fault in any way.

The fact the other car even tried to go around makes it their fault IMO.


Once again, there's a lot of assumptions, with the story being "telephone-gamed" from one person to another, to us, video evidence never lies, and it's the most reliable source.



So you're saying the person behind just kept going and didn't stop to give you enough space? Is ICBC's decision based on you backing up without checking first to ensure the car behind stopped to give you space?
I find this ruling very strange unless what I described above is what happened.

Parking accidents suck. Yesterday I was attempting to parallel park on a busy one way road (two lanes). I had my signal on for 20m, stopped, put my car in reverse to start backing in. An Infiniti driver that was at least 6 car lengths back travelling 40km/h) pulled right up behind me completely oblivious to my signal and reverse lights. With no one behind them I started backing into the spot and they had to back up. If I had struck them I likely would have been found at fault 100% even though the other driver was not paying attention.

My ex was slowly backing out of a parking spot at a mall and a vehicle drove right behind her at the same moment and her vehicle was struck on the back bumper. ICBC deemed it 50/50. When backing out of spot there is only so much you can do if everyone is impatient.

If you get a good dash cam that's at least 100+ degrees viewing angle in the front, you might capture the incident.

Parking is a situation where its usually the car who is pulling out/in that needs to be the most careful and usually is 100% at fault most of the time.

Sounds kinda unfair. So if someone was half way in a parking spot reversing in or even stopped half way. You decide you need a new bumper and decide to hit her and scrap the side of her car, you'll be deemed 0% at fault? Am I missing something?

until you get caught on dash cam for fraud

but even even if the car parking in OP's situation has a dash cam, it'd still be 50/50 if her vehicle was still in motion

I find these claims exaggerated or based from stories with omitted facts. At the end of the day, if there isn't video evidence (preferably front and rear), it's very tough to piece the full story just based on verbal accounts, especially if the culprit tries to lie (they almost always do).

I can bet if there was a rear dashcam present, the car parallel parking wouldn't be at fault if: 1) the car behind already was at full stop and there is enough space. 2) the car behind was approaching from a far distance, and decided to not stop and rear end.

For my example, I was driving down Cambie. Saw a spot. Signaled and proceeded to parallel park. The car that hit me was behind me at this point. As I was parking, the car behind me tried to pass and caught my front-left corner. This was 10+ years ago and I don't recall what their side of the story was. I did recall ICBC informing me that I was in the wrong because my car was in motion backwards going into the spot.

Guess i should start scraping cars left and right when theyre parking with a POS car and earn big bank:awwyeah:

yeah icbc traditionally assigns fault to the person backing up
pretty broken if you ask me

i know someone already stressed this, but yea, 2ch dashcam (front and rear), I literally have it installed in all my cars, all my family members' cars, all my friends cars because I constantly nag them.

Knock on wood, I had an accident in my EVO and honestly the dash cam saved me 100%, sent the video to ICBC, deemed 0% at fault after reviewing video, sent video to Burnaby RCMP, had the other driver receive a "drive without due care" ticket, which was later downgraded to "failed to yield" at court.

***just want to reinforce ... dash cam dash cam dash cam. And plus they are a one time investment. I have moved the same dash cam from the EVO to my new car. Still works like a charm.

wiring the rear cam is sucha pain though, esp when a hatch is involved :fuckthatshit:
wireless reverse cams been around forever, surprised dash cam hasn't caught on yet

Dashcam saved me 4x within the past 3 years in 2 different cars.

2 hit-and-run while my car was parked.
1 idiot blindly driving into my lane causing me to swerve into a curb destroying my tire.
1 semi-trailer changing lane into me, with another semi-trailer following behind him being his false witness to blame me (probably his coworker or something).

Dashcam trumps all, including bullshit false witnesses.

:awwyeah: