Thanks for all your lovely words of support, much appreciated.
Went to the Police again today to give them a better description of the van and full details of the witness. Pretty lacklustre response from them about the whole thing. Told me because it happened on a roundabout very hard to prove. Having found out at work, I told them that there is a CCTV camera on the roundabout (Sod’s Law it’s located on the opposite site to where the crash took place) and also a CCTV camera in the road that the van turned into. They said the CCTV would need to have picked up the actual collision and understandably the CCTV in the side road would not count as that’s not proof that the vehicle was involved. The Police have to request the CCTV from the council. Despite the vehicle leaving the scene of the accident it is not classified as a crime so just a normal CAD ref number. Frustrating! What else can you do!!!
I took the car down to my trusted repairer (VW Approved) this afternoon to be assessed. The assessor, knowing my passion for cars, couldn't believe what had happened. Even though they won’t know the full extent of the damage until the bumper is removed, he advised me wasn’t happy with me driving it at all due to the wheel taking a hit, and he said the way the bumper and wing panels are bent in under the tyre there’s a high risk of the misaligned sharp edges of the panel hitting the tyre on uneven roads and speed bumps. Plus he thinks it is quite likely there is damage behind the bumper. So I drove back in this…….
Had to go and get petrol for it, got out and couldn’t get the petrol flap open, not push-in style and no key, took me 5 minutes to find the lever under the dash, lol. Plus I’ve already left the manual handbrake off once (fortunately flat ground)! Plus it’s a manual so had to dust off my left foot.
Anyway my R is now in good hands, just need the formal full damage report and then Direct Line to be satisfied with it as their own engineer will want to have the final say, but the bodyshop guys are very familiar with DL engineers and are on the case so to speak. So fingers crossed.
In the meantime, I'm loving the 1.2 Nissan Micra..............not!