Backed into an unmarked piece of equipment sticking out from a parked work truck — who's at fault here?
So this happened last week and I'm still trying to wrap my head around it.
A utility crew had been working on the street in front of my house. At some point they parked one of their big work trucks partially along my curb, which was already annoying. After a while I needed to leave, so I slowly backed out of my driveway.
Here's the thing — one of their equipment arms or boom attachments was extended outward from the side of the truck. No orange cones, no flags, no safety tape, nothing. It stuck out probably four or five feet from the truck body and sat at kind of an awkward mid-height, so it wasn't visible in my backup camera angle. I heard the crunch before I even realized what happened.
Scraped up my rear quarter panel pretty good and cracked part of the bumper. The crew guys came running over and were actually pretty cool about it in person, gave me their supervisor's number. But now I'm getting the runaround from their company's insurance and there's some suggestion that I should've been more careful backing out.
Like… am I crazy for thinking they had a responsibility to mark or secure that equipment? There were literally kids playing on the sidewalk nearby — what if one of them had walked into it?
I filed a claim but I'm nervous they're going to try to pin partial fault on me just to reduce what they pay out. Does anyone have experience with something like this — hitting unmarked equipment left by a work crew? What actually determines fault in a situation like this?