Thanks for your reply.

According to the insurance company, there was no personal injury claim.

I suspect the third party made a claim for personal injury as well. Probably a bit of whiplash. Often Insurers will pay out up to £5k without too much evidence. If the third party submitted doctors evidence to support whiplash injuries, your Insurers may just have paid out.

It may have been a deliberate accident caused by the other driver with the aim to make a fraudulent claim. The problem is, how do you prove that this was the case ? If you went to the Police, would they bother to look into this ? If it were a few months ago, I doubt that they would bother.

Hi, this is my first posting here, so please be gentle with me if I'm posting in the wrong place.

I recently had a strange experience and the more I think about it, the more I wonder if there has been some fraud involved.

On New Year's Day, I was involved in a minor collision, which I believe was not my fault. It was in a 30 mph zone (so low speed) and the guy in the outer lane on a two lane road cut across me and collided with my front wing. There was minor damage to my wing and damage to his rear quarter and nearside door. I didn't think too much about it at the time, but the more I've thought about it since, the more I feel that the manouvre that caused the accident was intentional.

I exchanged addresses with the other driver and as his damage was worse than mine and I couldn't eb absolutely sure he was to blame we agreed to deal with it on a "knock for knock" basis, each sorting out our own damage (mine was so minor, I haven't even bothered getting it repaired.

A few weeks after the incident, I received a letter from my insurance company, advising me that the other party had lodged a claim. I write back, without prejudice, with my account of the incident and clearly stsred that I did not wish to make a claim.

Last week (so, five months on) I decided that it was time to trade my car in and get a newer one, so after choosing a car, decided to call the insurance company for a quote on the insurance. During the course of the conversation, it came out that not only has my insurer paid out the other party in the incident, but has paid out an amount of £4935!

Having checked the price uides, there is no way the other party's car was worth this much, and having sent the photos I took of the incident to some body shops, the highest quotation I've had for the repairs is £1500.

I'm 50 years old and don't regard myself as being naive, but something is not right here and I'm at a loss to know what scam has been pulled by who and what I can do about it.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.