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Hi motoring experts, it's still amid the Christmas holidays, but we were unfortunately involved in an accident caused by the other party. Around 5:25 pm this afternoon at a State Motorway 1 Service Center in Silverdale, when my wife legally drove our car straight ahead a lady was backing up her car without looking at the rear of it, which bumped into the rear part of our car on the left side. It is totally her fault with a few witnesses confirming this. We don't have insurance policy, but she has. She wrote down her detail and asked me to email her my detail and she said she would forward it to her insurance company. I emailed her the detail already and still waited for her reply. I guess insurance companies are still on holiday but my wife needs to work tomorrow onward and she definitely needs the car. She's afraid of driving it now before any safety check finishes. So my question is, what should we do now to best exercise and uphold our right? Can we go directly to a panel beater to get a quote and give that to the lady for a compensation? Because we are not sure how long we should wait before any response from her insurance company and we are in an urgent need of our car for work. Please help us with quite a detailed procedure explanation since it's the first time we have encountered this. We would like to solve this in the best possible way. Merry Christmas and thank you so much!

Hi there,
You are perfectly within your rights to obtain a repair quote or two and submit it to the other party- and they can then decide to either a/claim on their insurance or b/pay for the repairs directly.
Usually any insurance claims will take a while to process and then for the repairs to be carried out. In the meantime it might be best to call into a workshop and just have them confirm the vehicle is still ok to drive (no structural damage or loose panels).