| Parking lot accident...
California
This morning I was involved in a minor accident in my school's parking lot. I was following another student in order to take his spot in the parking lot. A red suped-up car was stopped in the lane, waiting for someone (no one in particular, just anyone) to pull out. Basically, he was 'squatting'. He had no signal on or any indication of entering a parking spot. I drove around the vehicle and placed my blinker on in order to pull into the spot that would soon become available due to the student I was following. The red car was now 15 feet or so behind me, so I looked left, then right, behind me and put my car into reverse. Suddenly I felt an impact and heard a horn blare. The red car had become impatient and tried to move around me (despite the crowded nature of the lot-- the student was trying to pull out, I was trying to reverse, and several other cars were waiting coming the opposite direction). He pulled into my blindspot very quickly and impact occured. I had already checked on that side and hadn't seen anyone coming. There is now a large scrape on my left rear bumper, which has removed my paint, slightly dented my car, and cracked the bottom of my tail light. He has EXTREMELY small scrapes of paint by his rear wheel rim and door and a VERY small dent. The damage is barely noticeable, particularly the dent.
Both of us are young and do not wish insurance premiums to go up, so we wish to take care of this on our own. It would be more expensive in the long run to go through insurance. My question is, who was at-fault? Should he pay for my damage or should I pay for his? His car has quite a few mods and he obviously has far more money at his disposal than I do, so I would like to protect my financial situation and find out who was at-fault. Or, should we just stick to paying for our own damage?
Thank you. | 
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