German laws and procedures on fender bender

Well few days ago,i was involved in a fender bender.No one was injured and i was under the speed limit but i guess the only problem was,it was rush hour and the braking distance wasnt enough with the front car.my car banged into the front vehicle when the other driver suddenly applied brakes and thats it.BANG.The other car wasnt damaged that much except that the bumper was pushed in.My car head lights are gone along with damaged bonnet.

Police came and took the necessary papers and asked the questions etc.Long story short,i got a letter that i have 7 days to tell my story.I am going to meet the lawyer tomorrow but i was wondering what will happen next?Any one of you has ever been in a situation like this in Germany?

Thanks

you will have to pay a (rather small) fine, you will have to pay the damage (might be a lot) and you'll have to pay your lawyer (which is probably not worth it just because of such a small accident)

http://www.fahrtipps.de/verkehrsrecht/buss...atalog.php?s=12
asuming that you were driving slower than 80km/h it says you will have to pay 35 eur fine

[edit]your insurances covers the damage of the other car of course but you will have to pay a fixed amount and your premium will go up, if you have a Vollkaskoversicherung your own car will be covered as well.

I'm glad the 'other car' wasn't a motorcycle - the 'damage' would probably have been much worse than a pushed-in bumper.

OMG - what if the 'other car' was a small baby sitting in the road with a cute fluffy baa lamb sitting on its lap?

Yes, and I'm still here alive and happy. I assume you have insurance to drive the car you crashed? If so nothing much will happen, you will have to provide details to your insurance company (which I did in English on the basis that clarity in English was better than mangled nonsense in German), and maybe to the police too. I can't imagine why you'd have to pay a fine as you haven't committed an offense. Your insurance company will then take over everything for you. As you hit the car in front you will almost certainly be >>90% at fault and your insurer will probably not contest this, which means they'll have to pay almost everything and the other guy's insurance will pay nearly nothing. Look forward to much higher premiums from next year, but otherwise you may hear nothing more from your insurer.

You may get a nasty looking document from a court if your insurer doesn't pay up promptly, which apparently they often don't and this was over a year later for me, but again this is the insurer's problem, not yours. If you have legal insurance that covers motoring incidents it may be worth informing them and asking advice, but generally it's best to say nothing to anyone who was involved in the accident, talk only to your insurer or lawyer. From my little accident I then discovered a friend's girlfriend, who is a lawyer and I wanted to ask for advice, worked at the practice that the guy I hit used to sue my insurer. Made life a little tricky that did.

Take pictures of your car before getting it fixed, then get your car into the garage, relax and carry on with life but in future drive more carefully - the Germans go racing round tailgating like pricks but it's not clever and not something that works.

Yes only Germans do this, tailgating accidents never happen in other countries.

idiot

Nah cruiser you had that coming with yer off-topic hypothetical. Plus, it was funny.

I had an accident with my English car.
Police came and told me I couldn't drive the car in that state.
They helped me to the next garage for safety sake and left me there.
I had no passport with me or anything on that day, they left the garage deal with me.

I did all the papers work with the garage (I was insured in the UK so quite complicated).The other person's car was in a bad state so total write off .
I admitted all the faults
An expert came to inspect my car and wrote a report which was fowarded to my insurance.
And that was about it. The insurance dealt with the garage directly.

What I recommend is to document damage in any accident is to keep a disposable camera in your glove department so you can take pictures of the damage of your car and the other vehicle at the scene. Or take the pics by using your cell phone camera.

...fair enough

It's just that, as a motorcyclist, I'm only too aware of the danger posed by dozy tin box drivers. A friend of mine lost his life in similar circumstances.

apologies, adrianlondon

No need to apologise! It's the risk I take by being sarcastic ;)

And as a cyclist, I'm with you on the "car drivers don't look" trip. Well, they do look, they just don't see anything apart from other cars. I'm a car driver as well so know what it's like from both ends.