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@matt_r_p
Hi all, would appreciate some practical advice here / "what would you do?"
Thursday lunchtime my missus was cycling down Hammersmith Grove when a white van reversed into the road and hit her. She came off the bike and the van rolled on to her foot. The driver, a 17-year-old, got out and apologised, and drove her to our friend's house nearby with the bike. His dad was with him and scribbled down his details for our friend on the back of an envelope. NB all these details are a bit sketchy because my wife can't properly remember what happened. There were no witnesses at the scene and no CCTV.
I cycled over from work, took her to A&E, where she was promptly seen and discharged: no head injury, no foot injury, just a bit of shock. Foot's a bit sore today but she's basically fine. The bike's front wheel is stuck but I haven't yet taken it apart to see how easy to fix it is, or whether the front wheel needs replacing. The bike's quite old and we were going to replace it, probably.
At the scene, the driver's dad offered to 'sort this out' without involving the insurers, because the kid had only passed his test a week ago. But when I called him yesterday and suggested £100, he said I needed to send him the receipt for the repair first. We had to finish the call and I'm due to ring him today.
A little twist is that a lot of his details that he scribbled down are deliberately false. He made the last digit of his mobile number wrong, although his office number was right (amusingly he seems to have had a last-minute change of heart about that: he wrote a 6 at the end of that number and then crossed it out and wrote 5). He's given a false address and postcode. The numberplate is correct and he's given the claims number of his insurers correctly (although I've yet to find out if they are really his insurers).
So my question is: what would you do? Given the injuries were slight at best, the police will tell me this is a civil matter (I've been there before with our local nick). The lack of witnesses means I don't especially rate my chances of a claim. And he's seeming quite slippery, so I'm not sure I can really be bothered to get worked up into chasing him / having numerous barneys, just to squeeze 100 quid out of him.
Any random thoughts most welcome.