Urgent legal advice is needed! Please help!

[Fernando]

Hello everyone, I am in desperate need of advice, mostly because I do not know how things work in China:

You see, last night just after I was about to get off a taxi and I open the door, another car (a private one) came from behind, passing right by us, hitting and bending the door. Obviously both cars where damaged in the process, but luckily no one was injured.

Now I decided to stay and wait for the police, mostly because in my opinion it was the other drivers fault and I thought that maybe the taxi driver needed my help testifying against the other people. After all, it was the other car that passed fast a close enough -on a no speed area- to almost rip off the taxi's door.

Now to my surprise, after waiting two hours for the traffic police and insurance company, they some how decided that this was the taxis drivers fault, without hearing to what I had to say, almost paying me no attention at all.

Suddenly the taxi driver decides that I am partially responsible for the damage and asks me to pay up. Of course I was outraged! I had only waited there, because I was thinking that I was helping him. So I told him that I was student that I had no money and even if I had I was not going to pay and that if he had any business with me he could call my university's foreign student's office, and I left.

Now I am a little worried, mostly because I do not what kind of problems to expect in the future.

The taxi driver called me twice at 4 AM, and I fear this might be the start of some sort of extortion campaign on his behalf, or even worst that he might seek retaliation of some sort.

What should I do? Has any one of you ever had a similar experience? What should I watch out for?

Thanks in advanced!

[Richard ridealgh]

Did you give them any other details about yourself other than a phone number?
And is your phone number registered at a china mobile/Unicom office, or just a number off the street? If its the latter, and they don't have your address then disappear(change your number immediately). If they do, then tell the embassy, and you need them to find a lawyer.

[Chris Knight]

Turn your phone off when you go to bed. Block his number. Get a new SIM card. Do everything you possibly can to avoid the guy. Besides, you shouldn't have to pay any money at all. The taxi company will never see it. It'll go straight into the driver's pocket. These taxis are maintained by the fleet. The drivers don't own the vehicles.

[Fernando]

What side of the car did you open the door? Left or right? If this does go any further and people start talking about who is at fault, and compensation, it may come back on you if you opened the door into the path of the other car.

Right, It was the right door.

By local traffic logic, hanging around an accident so long afterwards suggests a guilty conscious.

I thought of that, but the traffic police did not ask me to meet him at the station or anything of the sort that suggested that I was at fault. Could this turn around on me?

[Kim Tonkin]

A guy I worked with was in a similar situation - a driver claimed he damaged his car. The taxi driver came to the school demanding money and making threats. The school had to pay him the money ( it wasn't much) to make him go away. If they didn't pay who knows where it could end but if someone here feels you owe them money they won't let it go easily.

What side of the car did you open the door? Left or right? If this does go any further and people start talking about who is at fault, and compensation, it may come back on you if you opened the door into the path of the other car.