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Last night I had a car accident which involved me hitting a pedestrian, not a very nice feeling, but not my fault. She tried to run across a busy road, came out from behind a parked van so I did not see her until she was in front of me and I did not have time to stop. She is OK apart from some bruising and grazes, but my car will need some panel beating and a whole new windscreen.

I called my insurance, only to discover it had lapsed and I have not been covered for the last few weeks, my fault for not being attentive to these things I guess.

However in normal circumstances in a car crash, where the other person is at fault, I would assume their insurance company would pay for it. But because I hit a pedestrian rather than a car, I am not sure how this works. Any ideas out there???

Ultimately your best option may be to take the other person to the Disputes Tribunal to seek recovery of damages (that's assuming culpibility is proved, which is never as clear as it seems). However there may still be 2 options to persue insurance:

1. Was the other person insured? They may have been a pedestrian in this case, but if they also own a car and have insurance then it may be possible to claim from her insurance company as she was a road user, and her insurance should cover her for road accidents. It's a long shot but worth looking into.

2. You say your cover expired in the last 'few' weeks. It's not unheard of for insurance companies to demonstrate goodwill to clients when their policy has only recently expired through oversight. I would contact your account manager to explore this. We would expect them to look favourably on someone who has been a client of long-standing, with good (limited) claims history and a history of paying on time, and perhaps has lots of (current) policies with them.

Whatever you do, until the insurance matter is resolved, do not authorise any repairs to your car as the insurance companies have final say on the level of repair and approved repairer.