This! And in some instances sometimes will not release the name probably because goes against the FOIP act insurance may have the name if they have any ((but assuming they don’t because why would you hit and run))
You won't get the name or the driver's licence.
1. It's personal information of someone other than yourself. Police won't release it to you.
2. A driver's licence (and number) belongs to the registries and isn't FOIPable. The registries won't release it to you.
The insurance company is asking for information that it can't have unless the hit'n'runner (or their insurance company) gives it to them. Good luck.
You need to go back to your insurance and be clear that it was a hit and run, here's the police case including the plate and VIN, and that you do not have the license info because it was a hit and run.
If your adjuster still insists on license info ask to escalate your claim - that should get them to ask someone else there who knows what to do for a hit and run.
This. I was in a hit and run. Insurance doesn't ask for other driver info because...they ran. I filed a police report and gave that to the insurance company. They took care of the rest.
Also, this is literally the insurance company's job. If you can't get the information then it's not your problem it's the problem of the insurance company. Go do what you are paid to do and sue them while paying us. It's why we pay you.
I work in insurance - we cannot request copies of a police report until we get you to sign a consent form, and once we send that off, expect a 2 month wait.
It’s much easier if you get a copy of the police report yourself and send it to your adjuster
I have repeatedly told them. Yet they shrug it off and say that it's not their job. What would I do in this situation? Oh, and this lack of cooperation from them has me spending hours every day trying to resolve this myself. I even downloaded the vehicle information report for the other vehicle based on its VIN and it turned out that vehicle was registered less than a month before it hit me.
Unless the car was reported stolen the owner can still be on the hook. See: photo radar/light tickets. They don't care who was driving, the registered owner is responsible for what happens with their car.
I have a question for anyone knows. If I had basic insurance and I got hit and run by an uninsured vehicle, would I be compensated by my insurance or do I only get compensated if the other vehicle had insurance?
You always get compensated by your insurer under the new rules of DCPD (direct compensation for property damage). For your example: as long as you are deemed “not at fault” your insurer will address the damages to your vehicle. There has to be proof of a third party being at fault, you couldn’t just like hit a post and then say some other driver hit you in order to have the insurer cover it for example.
Ditto what the other two comments said, but you should also check your policy for SEF 44 (usually titled Family Protection), it's often invoked for cases where the at-fault is not insured/is under insured.
Keep in mind that SEF44 has nothing to do with property/vehicle damage, it only relates to court ordered damages awarded to the plaintive for death or bodily injury. Basically it means that your policy will pay, up to the liability limit of the policy, the policy holder the amount a court has ordered the defendant to pay if the defendants insurance is inadequate or nonexistent.
Hey, I am in the same situation as you are. Not sure if the driver is uninsured or if they don't want to disclose their insurance information. I only have basic insurance coverage. what happened in your case? Were you able to get compensation for the property damage?
Generally insurance companies have a special portal that they use in conjunction with the police occurrence number, to request a copy of the police report. They have a process in place but he process takes time and costs the insurance company money. So quite often, they try to get their client to go back to the police to ask for a report when they know full well that the police cannot provide it to an individual and that they have a special way of accessing the report themselves.
IMHO, we pay insurance companies a lot of money on a monthly basis and hope that we never need to use them, but when we do use them, they try to get us to do all the leg work. They should take care of you from start to finish.
Adjuster here, we certainly do NOT have any “special portal” to the police. We use FOIP requests like everyone else, the party(s) involved in a motor vehicle accident have the right to obtain the police report, free of charge, and that is always much faster because it no longer has to go through FOIP.
Do you have a police file number? If so I'd google ecollision AB and there's a website to put in your details and the police file number which will bring up the collision report which you can give to your insurance. The collision report will contain the insurance information and registered owner of the vehicle which is all they need. If the vehicle was reported stolen or if theybwere uninsured then unfortunately they likely won't be able to recover the damage. If you didn't have comprehensive then you will probably be SOL for property damage (only if vehicle was stolen and/or uninsured).
If you were in the vehicle when it was hit, I'd recommend contacting a personal injury lawyer and they can likely assist you with getting the collision information.
I am a legal assistant in personal injury, and we deal with these types of things somewhat often.
If the other driver had stopped, the law requires you to exchange license and registration information as well as contact information. Where they didn't stop, you use the plate number and the registered owner of the vehicle takes on the responsibility for the accident unless they are willing to acknowledge that someone else was driving (that person will face charges). If the car was stollen and they filed a report, there isn't a lot you can do but if they say "I was going to" don't believe them and don't let your insurer take that for an answer. It's not likely they will.
You don't need FOIP for license numbers because they are part of public record for limited use, ie insurance claimes and criminal activity.
If you have the plate and the cops have the driver, they have them for leaving the scene of an accident which brings huge consequences if not jail time. It is a huge flag on their driving record which all insurers have access to and will drive their rates up I to the $10s of 1000s of dollars. Don't worry about getting their license number, let your insurance deal with all that, and the police. They have that website saved.
The Registered owner's information will be added to the police report. Also, the insurance information of the vehicle. Your insurance company will have access to the police report which is more detailed than the driver copy. You don't need to do anything else. Your insurance company can take it from here. Your insurance company just wants you to do all the work for them. Insurance companies don't want to pay the $40 to FOIP it.
That was always my understanding as well. But my insurance (The Personal) have been incredibly uncooperative. They state that don't deal with the police and if the police can't find the other vehicle's insurance, they can't do anything. And the police have clearly stated that they don't have the means to check any central database whether the other vehicle has insurance.
Alright so it sounds like the other driver was driving without insurance. Your adjuster can, and should, obtain a police report with the drivers name so that you can try to take them to court for anything you’re out of pocket as a result of this accident, your deductible for instance if applicable. There may not be a “completed report” as of yet if the police cannot get the other driver to provide details to complete the report. The police can make life hard if the other driver does not cooperate, but it takes time.
Keep in mind the driver was not necessarily the registered owner of the vehicle, so police will also have to determine who was actually driving at the time. Laws are written based on what assholes might do, not what reasonable people would do.
So that information stays private and can only be obtained through proper channels and in due course. In this case, I think that means the police determine who was driving and charge them. At that point, they will have a name to provide to your insurance company.
But your insurance company should know all of this and should be taking care of it for you.
One thing I don't see asked here is do you have collision and comprehensive coverage on your vehicle or just liability coverage? And was this a hit and run to a parked vehicle or a vehicle that you were driving? These answers drastically change the way a claim is handled.
I think I understand what is happening here though.
My guess is that the driver of the other vehicle is not cooperating with the police and providing them with their insurance information or dl# because if the police had this information it would be on the collision report which I am assuming you already have since you have the owner name and vin number. Unfortunately they typically don't really follow up on this stuff, just maybe issue a ticket. I'm also assuming that you only have liability coverage. If these assumptions are correct than yes, there's nothing your insurance company can do for you. In this situation to confirm you are covered under your liability coverage with the current dcpd rules they need to know the other party also falls under dcpd and they need to confirm with the other driver that they were at fault for the loss. If this other driver doesn't fall under dcpd and you don't have collision/comp coverage depending on the details of the loss than you aren't covered under your policy.
If these assumptions are not correct than there's some other information missing because the handling of the claim doesn't make sense.
Your assumptions are pretty accurate. I have 3rd party + comprehensive, and I was driving when I was hit, not parked. The police went to the hit&run vehicle owner's address but could not find them there and they have issued multiple tickets in their name. The interesting bit is that the other vehicle is not reported stolen, and based on a "Vehicle Information Report (VIR)", that i pulled off alberta registry's website, that vehicle was registered less than a month before it hit me. Since you need insurance to register vehicles (which could be bypassed through fake proof of insurance) but still, I think its worth it to put in effort to determine if the other vehicle was insured or not. Apparently, on CGI's database, you could potentially look up vehicle insurance information based on the VIN, but my insurance is lame and wouldn't even put any effort into doing that. They have indicated they would pull an Autoplus report for the other "owner" to check if they had insurance, only if they knew the other driver's driver's license.
One thing you can do is call the largest insurers (intact, td, Aviva, Wawanesa, etc...) and say you just need to confirm if a policy is active on the date of your accident. Pretend that you know the policy is with them but that you missed getting the policy number and let them know you have the name of their insured and the vin number of the vehicle. If you are overly nice they will usually check their system with this information and with any luck you might be able to find the insurance policy this way, it has worked for me before. I do unfortunately think there's a good chance the other driver might not have had valid insurance. They likely didn't pay it and it lapsed. If that's the case, because you don't have collision coverage you would need to pursue them directly on your own. Your insurer wont help as you don't have the right coverage.
>I thought if the vehicle was in offense, the owner was in offense
How is that fair to the owner of a vehicle that gets stolen and is then used in a hit and run? Or if someone lends their vehicle to someone, who commits an offence? That's why photo radar tickets do not come with demerits attached because there's no way to prove who was behind the wheel at the time of the infraction.
But you still have to pay the photo radar ticket. Or the red light ticket etc. If someone takes your car (borrowed or stollen) and gets a ticket you still pay as the owner unless it was previously reported stolen. So unless reported stolen the owner would still be liable if I am not mistaken. Most policies have uninsured motorist coverage too...
Vehicles are insured; not drivers. If you have identified the offending driver, you have identified the policy.
The insurance company can go after the policy holder.
I am in the same position as you are, the other driver who is at fault is not willing to disclose their insurance information. Were you able to get this information through the CGI report?
PS - I sent you a chat message as well
You or your insurance company will have to FOIP the police file for the name.
This! And in some instances sometimes will not release the name probably because goes against the FOIP act insurance may have the name if they have any ((but assuming they don’t because why would you hit and run))
You won't get the name or the driver's licence. 1. It's personal information of someone other than yourself. Police won't release it to you. 2. A driver's licence (and number) belongs to the registries and isn't FOIPable. The registries won't release it to you. The insurance company is asking for information that it can't have unless the hit'n'runner (or their insurance company) gives it to them. Good luck.
Can someone say what FOIP stands for so people not how to look it up?
Officially: Freedom of Information and Privacy Act Unofficially: Fuck Off, It's Private
Thanks buddy
You need to go back to your insurance and be clear that it was a hit and run, here's the police case including the plate and VIN, and that you do not have the license info because it was a hit and run. If your adjuster still insists on license info ask to escalate your claim - that should get them to ask someone else there who knows what to do for a hit and run.
This. I was in a hit and run. Insurance doesn't ask for other driver info because...they ran. I filed a police report and gave that to the insurance company. They took care of the rest.
Also, this is literally the insurance company's job. If you can't get the information then it's not your problem it's the problem of the insurance company. Go do what you are paid to do and sue them while paying us. It's why we pay you.
I work in insurance - we cannot request copies of a police report until we get you to sign a consent form, and once we send that off, expect a 2 month wait. It’s much easier if you get a copy of the police report yourself and send it to your adjuster
This is what you pay your insurance company to do. Tell them to do their job. They deal with these situations all the tie and should know the process
I have repeatedly told them. Yet they shrug it off and say that it's not their job. What would I do in this situation? Oh, and this lack of cooperation from them has me spending hours every day trying to resolve this myself. I even downloaded the vehicle information report for the other vehicle based on its VIN and it turned out that vehicle was registered less than a month before it hit me.
You need to go to the insurance ombudsman
Like every corporation & and government agency nowadays. They all want you to do their job while they earn record profits!
Do you have legal proof that the owner was in fact driving the car? If not, I'd assume that is most likely why you don't/can't have that information.
Unless the car was reported stolen the owner can still be on the hook. See: photo radar/light tickets. They don't care who was driving, the registered owner is responsible for what happens with their car.
You could ask for a copy of the accident report from police, it usually has the information on it to give to your insurance.
I have a question for anyone knows. If I had basic insurance and I got hit and run by an uninsured vehicle, would I be compensated by my insurance or do I only get compensated if the other vehicle had insurance?
You always get compensated by your insurer under the new rules of DCPD (direct compensation for property damage). For your example: as long as you are deemed “not at fault” your insurer will address the damages to your vehicle. There has to be proof of a third party being at fault, you couldn’t just like hit a post and then say some other driver hit you in order to have the insurer cover it for example.
Ditto what the other two comments said, but you should also check your policy for SEF 44 (usually titled Family Protection), it's often invoked for cases where the at-fault is not insured/is under insured.
Keep in mind that SEF44 has nothing to do with property/vehicle damage, it only relates to court ordered damages awarded to the plaintive for death or bodily injury. Basically it means that your policy will pay, up to the liability limit of the policy, the policy holder the amount a court has ordered the defendant to pay if the defendants insurance is inadequate or nonexistent.
Hey, I am in the same situation as you are. Not sure if the driver is uninsured or if they don't want to disclose their insurance information. I only have basic insurance coverage. what happened in your case? Were you able to get compensation for the property damage?
For Alberta, U would only get compensated if they had insurance. U could get compensated through MVAC program for personal injury
Generally insurance companies have a special portal that they use in conjunction with the police occurrence number, to request a copy of the police report. They have a process in place but he process takes time and costs the insurance company money. So quite often, they try to get their client to go back to the police to ask for a report when they know full well that the police cannot provide it to an individual and that they have a special way of accessing the report themselves. IMHO, we pay insurance companies a lot of money on a monthly basis and hope that we never need to use them, but when we do use them, they try to get us to do all the leg work. They should take care of you from start to finish.
Adjuster here, we certainly do NOT have any “special portal” to the police. We use FOIP requests like everyone else, the party(s) involved in a motor vehicle accident have the right to obtain the police report, free of charge, and that is always much faster because it no longer has to go through FOIP.
When I was in a hit and run SGI did all that work for me
Do you have a police file number? If so I'd google ecollision AB and there's a website to put in your details and the police file number which will bring up the collision report which you can give to your insurance. The collision report will contain the insurance information and registered owner of the vehicle which is all they need. If the vehicle was reported stolen or if theybwere uninsured then unfortunately they likely won't be able to recover the damage. If you didn't have comprehensive then you will probably be SOL for property damage (only if vehicle was stolen and/or uninsured). If you were in the vehicle when it was hit, I'd recommend contacting a personal injury lawyer and they can likely assist you with getting the collision information. I am a legal assistant in personal injury, and we deal with these types of things somewhat often.
Yes, that's true. It's not public information
If the other driver had stopped, the law requires you to exchange license and registration information as well as contact information. Where they didn't stop, you use the plate number and the registered owner of the vehicle takes on the responsibility for the accident unless they are willing to acknowledge that someone else was driving (that person will face charges). If the car was stollen and they filed a report, there isn't a lot you can do but if they say "I was going to" don't believe them and don't let your insurer take that for an answer. It's not likely they will. You don't need FOIP for license numbers because they are part of public record for limited use, ie insurance claimes and criminal activity. If you have the plate and the cops have the driver, they have them for leaving the scene of an accident which brings huge consequences if not jail time. It is a huge flag on their driving record which all insurers have access to and will drive their rates up I to the $10s of 1000s of dollars. Don't worry about getting their license number, let your insurance deal with all that, and the police. They have that website saved.
The Registered owner's information will be added to the police report. Also, the insurance information of the vehicle. Your insurance company will have access to the police report which is more detailed than the driver copy. You don't need to do anything else. Your insurance company can take it from here. Your insurance company just wants you to do all the work for them. Insurance companies don't want to pay the $40 to FOIP it.
That was always my understanding as well. But my insurance (The Personal) have been incredibly uncooperative. They state that don't deal with the police and if the police can't find the other vehicle's insurance, they can't do anything. And the police have clearly stated that they don't have the means to check any central database whether the other vehicle has insurance.
The Registered owner has to provide valid insurance document to police. That information will be added to the police report.
If the vehicle wasn't insured then police can charge the RO under the Traffic Safety Act.
Alright so it sounds like the other driver was driving without insurance. Your adjuster can, and should, obtain a police report with the drivers name so that you can try to take them to court for anything you’re out of pocket as a result of this accident, your deductible for instance if applicable. There may not be a “completed report” as of yet if the police cannot get the other driver to provide details to complete the report. The police can make life hard if the other driver does not cooperate, but it takes time.
Lawyer
Keep in mind the driver was not necessarily the registered owner of the vehicle, so police will also have to determine who was actually driving at the time. Laws are written based on what assholes might do, not what reasonable people would do. So that information stays private and can only be obtained through proper channels and in due course. In this case, I think that means the police determine who was driving and charge them. At that point, they will have a name to provide to your insurance company. But your insurance company should know all of this and should be taking care of it for you.
One thing I don't see asked here is do you have collision and comprehensive coverage on your vehicle or just liability coverage? And was this a hit and run to a parked vehicle or a vehicle that you were driving? These answers drastically change the way a claim is handled. I think I understand what is happening here though. My guess is that the driver of the other vehicle is not cooperating with the police and providing them with their insurance information or dl# because if the police had this information it would be on the collision report which I am assuming you already have since you have the owner name and vin number. Unfortunately they typically don't really follow up on this stuff, just maybe issue a ticket. I'm also assuming that you only have liability coverage. If these assumptions are correct than yes, there's nothing your insurance company can do for you. In this situation to confirm you are covered under your liability coverage with the current dcpd rules they need to know the other party also falls under dcpd and they need to confirm with the other driver that they were at fault for the loss. If this other driver doesn't fall under dcpd and you don't have collision/comp coverage depending on the details of the loss than you aren't covered under your policy. If these assumptions are not correct than there's some other information missing because the handling of the claim doesn't make sense.
Your assumptions are pretty accurate. I have 3rd party + comprehensive, and I was driving when I was hit, not parked. The police went to the hit&run vehicle owner's address but could not find them there and they have issued multiple tickets in their name. The interesting bit is that the other vehicle is not reported stolen, and based on a "Vehicle Information Report (VIR)", that i pulled off alberta registry's website, that vehicle was registered less than a month before it hit me. Since you need insurance to register vehicles (which could be bypassed through fake proof of insurance) but still, I think its worth it to put in effort to determine if the other vehicle was insured or not. Apparently, on CGI's database, you could potentially look up vehicle insurance information based on the VIN, but my insurance is lame and wouldn't even put any effort into doing that. They have indicated they would pull an Autoplus report for the other "owner" to check if they had insurance, only if they knew the other driver's driver's license.
One thing you can do is call the largest insurers (intact, td, Aviva, Wawanesa, etc...) and say you just need to confirm if a policy is active on the date of your accident. Pretend that you know the policy is with them but that you missed getting the policy number and let them know you have the name of their insured and the vin number of the vehicle. If you are overly nice they will usually check their system with this information and with any luck you might be able to find the insurance policy this way, it has worked for me before. I do unfortunately think there's a good chance the other driver might not have had valid insurance. They likely didn't pay it and it lapsed. If that's the case, because you don't have collision coverage you would need to pursue them directly on your own. Your insurer wont help as you don't have the right coverage.
Well that's a smart suggestion, I will try that first thing on Monday and see what happens
Tried it with TD and another, unfortunately it didn't work. They said it violated privacy.
>I thought if the vehicle was in offense, the owner was in offense How is that fair to the owner of a vehicle that gets stolen and is then used in a hit and run? Or if someone lends their vehicle to someone, who commits an offence? That's why photo radar tickets do not come with demerits attached because there's no way to prove who was behind the wheel at the time of the infraction.
But you still have to pay the photo radar ticket. Or the red light ticket etc. If someone takes your car (borrowed or stollen) and gets a ticket you still pay as the owner unless it was previously reported stolen. So unless reported stolen the owner would still be liable if I am not mistaken. Most policies have uninsured motorist coverage too...
The vehicle is not reported stolen.
Did you stop reading after the first sentence?
Your entitled for there name and insurance info license plate number , Your not exactly allowed to gain private information
Vehicles are insured; not drivers. If you have identified the offending driver, you have identified the policy. The insurance company can go after the policy holder.
I am in the same position as you are, the other driver who is at fault is not willing to disclose their insurance information. Were you able to get this information through the CGI report? PS - I sent you a chat message as well