csb - I have a dash cam and very similar thing happened to me. Kid pulled out in front of me trying to make a left. I swerved to avoid, hit the median and f'd my front end all up. No collision with the kid's car. To the kid's credit (or dumbassery) he stopped. A car behind me also stopped and said they saw the whole thing and would tell the cops so. Cop shows up, talks to the kid, talks to witness, assigns blame to the kid in his report.
I call the kid's insurance company and of course they give me the insurance company runaround. "Yes sir, we have the police report and know the cop assigned blame but until we talk to our insured, we ain't gonna do a gotdamn thing and he has 30 days to respond to us." I send them the dash cam video and they immediately say "yeah OK we'll pay for all the repairs."
Tl; dr: get a dashcam. Also, don't tell anyone you have the video until you actually see it yourself. There were a couple of minor details that I remembered wrong.