Not a great start to a Monday

On the way to work this morning, someone rear-ended my new car. I was happily singing along to the radio to pass the time in the traffic when the girl in the Golf behind me, who was still some distance away, shot into the rear bumper - boom.
The whole of the back of the car needs replacing and the bumper is scratched and also needs attention.
It is at times like this that you realise quite how far away you are from the systems that you know. Meaning that I did not follow the processes that I needed to...
I grabbed the details from the girl, her phone number, name, address, licence plate etc, but when I later asked in the bar near to the accident they told me that I needed to do the CID. (Pronounced Chid).
It turns out that this is a form that you fill in when someone has smacked into you (or vice versa I suppose) to start the insurance process. The idea is that you do a small drawing, tick the box of who based whom and then the rest is sorted out by the insurance company. It seems like a great system, once you know about it!
The benefit of working for a company like mine is that we are big enough that someone comes to the office to give you a quote for the damages. There is also an insurance consultant who comes here to give us discounts on policies, and tells us what to do with any problems.
So looking on the bright side, there has been a heap of advice since the accident this morning. I am still hoping it will not happen again, but from now on, to be safe, I am carrying a CID in my car.