[bluevolt]

I want to share an incident that happened with my car and seek advice for the next steps.

My car (Kia Seltos), parked in my allotted parking, has been severely damaged by a bike parked adjacent to it. I notice the damage during my night walk (at 11.10 pm) today.

The bike must have fallen on the car and someone just picked it up and ran away. Please find photos of the damage attached.

Upon finding this, I called the guard at the tower and asked him to bring the owner of the bike along. But as per the guard, no one opened the gate of the flat even after 5-7 rings of the bell. After this, the main gate security was called. The supervisor came to the parking to see the damage. He checked the bike and it was found that the bike was on the side stand, with a punctured tyre, totally imbalanced and someone just made it fall on my car. As per the supervisor, the owner did not answer the phone.

Please advise me on the next steps to take. Should I call the police in the morning if the owner is still not reachable or does not accept his fault? How should I manage this damage? Get it done through insurance or at an outside workshop. My car is 3 years old and I haven't claimed insurance yet.

I have written an e-mail to the society maintenance office for action highlighting the below points -

1. The parking next to mine is an empty space and besides that, it belongs to another flat. Hence, this bike is wrongly parked next to my parking spot. This has damaged my car badly due to the negligence of the owner in the first place.

2. I have asked the security to scan the CCTV footage in the parking area to identify who caused the damage. If it is some other person who made the bike fall, he/she should be identified at the earliest and action should be taken against them. I parked my car at 2 pm in the slot in perfect condition and I saw it damaged at 11.10 pm during my night walk.

3. The guard on duty at the tower prior to 8 pm must be called and interrogated - why he did not check the parking? When the bike would have fallen, it must have caused a loud noise and the guard must be attentive enough to check the incident in the first place. The car itself is parked close to the lift lobby.

4. Even If the bike had fallen due to some other person, the owner of the bike will still be held liable for damage as it is his responsibility that the vehicle is in a stable condition when parked so that it doesn't fall on another vehicle.

5. This is a clear case of unorganised bike parking near the designated parking slots of the owner. I have asked for immediate action to be taken to remove wrongly parked bikes near the designated parking spaces of others. Bike/scooter owners must be directed to park in their assigned slots, where they park their own cars so that their two-wheelers cause damage to their cars in case of a fall and not to others' property.

[ashivas89]

Very sorry to see your car damaged and this is certainly reckless on the part of the bike owner.

If you have accumulated 3 years' worth of NCB, then it makes no sense claiming insurance for this. A competent independent body shop should be able to fix this for an amount less than your NCB loss.

BHPians from the NCR can recommend good body shops.

Cops getting involved will be a very expensive option...

[self_driven]

Originally Posted by bluevolt

I want to share this incident that happened with my car amd seek advice for next steps.

My car (Kia Seltos) parked in my allotted parking has been severely damaged by a bike parked adjacent to my car. I found this damage during my night walk at 11.10 pm today.

Bike/Scooty owners must be directed to park in their assigned slots where they park their own car so their two wheeler causes damage to their cars and not to others property.

I know it's heartbreaking for a car owner but police action for such trivial issues is really not worth it. Rather what you can do is make enough noise so that RWA members and security take a note of it and such accidents can be prevented in the future.

Check the CCTV footage. If the bike fell down on its own (which is owner's negligence), get your car repaired under insurance or otherwise and ask the bike owner to pay for damages.

If some kiddos or a third person did it, which is more likely to be the case, I doubt there's much you can do. Get it repaired and move on with life.

[bblost]

It will be impossible to pin the liability on the RWA. They will have some board or notice that will say parking at owners risk.

Your best bet is to hope that there is a CCTV that captured this and the person is a resident.

Additionally that that resident is a decent person who accepts his mistake.

[am1m]

Originally Posted by bluevolt

Should I call the police in the morning if the owner is still not reachable or does not accept his fault?

Don't even think about involving the cops for this small damage. I understand how this feels to a car owner who loves his vehicle, but getting the cops involved will make things far worse. If you're lucky, they will refuse to get involved seeing the minor damage. If you are unlucky, they will use it as an excuse to extract money from both you and the person you are making the complaint about!

Even about the other person accepting blame, it's going to be a matter of luck. If you are lucky, they will do the decent thing. But mentally prepare yourself that they won't. Get it repaired, move on. Certainly lodge it as an issue with the RWA. Whatever you do, don't continuously try and seek out the other party. Offense is the best form of defense and people who are wrong often get aggressive to cover their mistake. They might file a harassment complaint against you and that is certainly something the cops are more likely to act on!

[TwentyDeewar]

Agree with the opinion of folks on this thread.

I had a similar experience a couple of years ago when an overhead pipe came apart and fell on my car's roof and bonnet in the designated parking slot. I initially tried to take the path you want to go down on -> Managed to get CCTV evidence and tried to pin the fault on poor maintenance. Realised that the amount of time I was spending on this vs the benefit was just not worth it. I got the car repaired and moved on (that's what insurance is for). I just ensured that the pipe repair work was done properly so that it doesn't happen again.

I understand how you must be feeling, but its probably best to repair the car and move on. I think you have already brought it to the notice of the right folks, and a good win for you would be if the bike's owner is more careful in the future about how he parks and/or moves the bike away to a different slot.

[boohooper]

ANOTHER ANGLE: Check if any other car in that parking lot has got a dent on the front or rear. I'm guessing that another vehicle must have hit this bike and the bike fell on your car. Check for cars with some new repair work done on them.

[sumeethaldankar]

Kindly claim insurance and get it fixed. The whole purpose of the insurance is for such things. Since no damage to life was done involving police is of no use, they will probably make you sit at the station for hours waiting till you change your mind of filing a complaint. A common tactic used by cops to have minimum people file reports etc.

The society could co-operate and provide you CCTV footage, hopefully the owner will come forward. Since you have already sent an email you could request the society to take positive action and desist wrong parking in designated areas and fine fellow society members for such violations.

In a society I visit vehicles parked wrong are clamped and the owner fined for such acts.

[Vyas]

I believe RWA is not going to accept the blame. The accused owner not responding to calls means that he is either scared or waiting for the issue to settle down.

Here is my suggestion:
1) Get CCTV footage to understand what exactly happened, note that the footage gets overridden based on the capacity of the hard drive in the CCTV set-up, so get footage as soon as possible.

2) If the owner is at fault, wait for some days to get in touch with him and have a conversation stating the facts and asking to pay at least 50% of the repair costs, I hope RWA will be on your side so that they will close the matter soon.

Worst case, take a loss and repair it by yourself.

[Apex1815]

If you want to keep a Parrot, you have be aware of cats nearby or else put the parrot in the cage.
Sadly, you cannot keep car inside a closed shell.

My car parking is similar to you. I have tied Two ropes (tied between pillars)
so as to guard fall off of a bike on my car from the sides. You can try this (if the pillar placement is like this). This has helped me.

[Carzy_Carz30]

Very sorry to see your car damaged. My opinion goes along with fellow BHPian for not involving Police for small issue.

As for repairs, it’s your own choice to go for insurance repair or get it repaired from outside. You can install a dash cam for recording future events.

You can raise the matter in society meeting for passing a resolution, proposing that a penalty be levied for:

1. not parking vehicles in their designated place.

2. parking vehicle in another’s parking space.

[chinkara]

I had my bumper smashed in. Location: office parking. Nothing can be done. I was late to leave office that day (so security head had left and could not see CCTV footage) and when I turned up next it was overwritten.

[revsperminute]

So sorry to see the damage to your car. I know how infuriating it is when our cars are damaged by no fault of ours. Unfortunately, this stuff does happen and there's pretty much nothing you can do about it except raise the issue in your society meeting.

Although it probably would not have helped in this case, if your car is not driven regularly, I'd suggest you get a sturdy car cover to protect it from smaller nicks and scratches in the future. Kids in my building play hide n' seek in the parking lot and even though they have never damaged my or anyone else's car, the nicer ones live under a cover when they are not to be driven for more than a couple of days.

[Strider24]

I agree with fellow bhpains here, incidents like this are called accident and thats what the insurance is for.

If cost of losing NCB is high then better to get it done at own cost from a competent garage, just ensure that correct color code is selected for repaint.

It's really not worth spending time on following up such trivial incident, rather I liked the idea suggested by another bhpian in earlier post to tie a rope as fence to block the empty space. This will prevent such future accident.

Cheers!

[bravo82in]

The cost of repair at an Independent garage will be less than the price you pay for dinner at a good place. Get at repaired at your own cost and move on. It’s not a major damage, and certainly not worth your time and energy.