Woman ordered to pay €14,000 over head-on collision

A traffic accident in Rabat has cost one woman dearly after she was ordered to pay an eye-watering €14,137 to an insurance company for a head-on collision which she was adjudged to be at fault for.

Elmo Insurance filed proceedings in the First Hall of the Civil Court against the woman (SG) over a traffic accident that occurred on 10 January 2014 in Triq it-Tigrija, Rabat. Another woman (LM) had been driving her husband’s Jeep Compass when it collided with SG’s Peugeot 106.

Elmo Insurance had paid LM, who was insured with them, €14,012 in damages caused to her car. It then sued SG, holding her responsible for the collision.

LM insisted that SG had taken a bend at high speed and skidded into the opposite lane, while the latter claimed the opposite. 

Police witnesses told the court of 12-metre brake marks from SG’s lane, leading into LM’s. Although SG argued that unlike hers, the other vehicle was fitted with ABS and therefore left no brakemarks, Judge Lawrence Mintoff, deciding the case, held that this argument did not hold water.

Although ABS would make a car safer in an emergency, it was not true that the vehicle equipped with it would not leave skid marks.  

The judge described the case as a typical case of conflicting accounts with both sides blaming the other. The parties agreed that the road was wet with dew and that had the cars stuck to their lanes, the incident would have been avoided.

The judge observed that from the evidence, including police sketches, it emerged that it had been SG’s excessive speed on a bend with a wet surface, which led to the fateful skid. 

The evidence showed that it was probable that SG had been driving at 46km/hr not at 40km/hr as she had claimed. 

“From the dynamics of the incident, from the position of the vehicles after the accident, it emerges that it is not true that the plaintiff had been driving in the middle of the road and even, if for the sake of the arguement, neither of the cars were in its proper lane, had the adefendant not been driving too fast, it would have been easier for both drivers to correct their position before getting too close to each other.”

The Judge added that LM had found an unexpected and unavoidable obstacle in her path while SG had placed herself in a position where she could not control her vehicle due to its speed. 

The court ruled that SG was solely responsible for the accident and ordered her to pay €14,137.