ICBC has faced yet another insurance claim lawsuit after a driver argued to the BC Civil Resolution Tribunal that he was incorrectly blamed in a road rage accident in Surrey.
In an incident resembling a low-budget version of Fast and Furious, ICBC determined that Allan Glen was 50% responsible for an accident after a third party started a car chase. Glen argued that he was not responsible and claimed $250 from ICBC for a partial deductible he paid to repair his vehicle.
According to Glen’s version of the incident, he was parked in a vacant parking lot on 184th Street in Surrey on August 24, 2021, while engaging in a “peaceful protest” against a companion of the third party. The third party then allegedly “rammed” his car on the bumper and came out of the car to threaten Glen with hockey sticks.
Heating up even more, Glen told the court that he drove away and saw the third party following him by car. He then said that he went around a roundabout at the end of the avenue to switch directions back onto the road the other car was driving along, and then the third party crossed into his lane and hit his car in the rear bumper area.
Yikes. That sounds dramatic.
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The problem for Glen was that his version of events was slightly different from that of the third party. Hence the blame issue for the court.
The third party argued that they confronted Glen in the lot because he was posting “defamatory signs” about them around Surrey and that Glen “used his car as a weapon” to drive past them in the lot. As for the car chase, the third party said that Glen made a U-turn in the road and was swerving before the cars collided.
Unfortunately for the court and drivers, there were no witnesses to the crash or dashcam footage as evidence. So, the decision came down to whose account of events was more accurate.
Glen tried to claim that his version of events was accurate using a series of arguments. First, he tried to argue that the angle of the impact was inconsistent with the other account. However, the court disagreed with this argument and said that the account of him swerving lanes in the third party’s accusation of road rage was plausible, given the damage seen in photos of the accident.
He then tried to argue that their account of him doing a U-turn was wrong because there was not enough room for this manoeuvre before the roundabout. Unluckily for Glen, the court also found this to be untrue.
Finally, Glen tried to argue that the decision to follow his car was “aggressive” and provided more credibility to his account. The court didn’t disagree with the aggressive nature of the behaviour but also highlighted that Glen exhibited aggressive behaviour, too, by posting the defamatory signs.
The court ultimately decided that Glen was accurately held 50% responsible for the incident along with the third party and, as such, was not entitled to claim the money back from ICBC.
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