managing a car accident ... in france

As previewed, today I have walked down to my assurance company to discuss the outcome of the situation generated by the car accident I had Saturday. I do not know how it works somewhere else, but in France if you have a no victims car accident the police does not get involved. It's up to the drivers to complete a report. This report is then filed to the insurance company and further on it is the job of the insurance company to argue with the other drivers' insurance companies about the fact of who's guilty and who is going to pay for the damages. Rather strange.

I guess all the insurance companies have the interest of not paying for the damages, but how it is going this thing to be solved? They all gather in a room and fight it over? :) I think not, because from what I have understood the process is a black box for the end-user, with no precise result and even more important, with no precise deadline for the answer. So it can take from weeks to months. It is not very convenient when it is you ass on the line, it was not your fault and all you have is a basic insurance. Now all you can do is wait and hope that the others will pay your repairs. Nice, huh? :)

Well, in my case, after the expertise I will have tomorrow in order to evaluate the damages, I will begin the repairs and hope very hard that I will be reimboursed. Still I think it could have helped if the police would have filled in a report, and not leave the decision only based on 2 pages of 100 words report written by the drivers and a lousy drawn scheme of the accident. Fortunately, we took some pictures of the accident scene so I hope that will help clearing the doubts.