Sounds like a typical case of the tail wagging the dog!
Insurance companies are very, very fond of thinking that they are the law, and that what they say is what will happen.
Ultimately, the job of the insurance company is to cover your loss in the event of an accident. It is not their job to decide who is to blame, though they will happily take it upon themselves to do so and unfortunately we usually tend to let them get away with it. Their preferred action generally in cases where doubt can be introduced is to partially blame both drivers, then both lose their no claims and both pay a full excess towards the costs. That way the insurance companies as a whole recoup their loss much more quickly.
The highway code is a useful guide as to what constitutes good or bad driving, but even that is not the law. In the first instance, as noted previously, you could take your good witness and approach the police about the possibility of the prosecuting the other driver for due care and attention, or even do so yourself, though that would be somewhat unusual!
The other, more realistic path to take here is to go and talk to a decent motoring solicitor about the likelyhood of winning the case if you take a civil action out against the other driver. This probably swings massively on the credibility of the witness. From what you've said I'd actually have expected most courts would tend to veer more towards the other driver being to blame, and if your witness really does back this up with credible evidence you'd think your case would be pretty strong.
You may have legal cover on your insurance but on the one occasion I tried using this I found that they were worse than useless as they will only take on cases where they think winning is a 100% certainty, ie the ones where you would win your costs back anyway! I've never bought it since...
So if you went to court and won, you'd get your costs back and your insurance would have no claim to pay so you wouldn't lose NCD or have to pay an excess. But if you lose it would cost you the legal expenses and possibly the other drivers. In theory your insurance ought to cover that but they would argue that you incurred that expense by ignoring their advice.
So it all swings on how good you think your case is. As I say, ask a solicitor but bear in mind they are quite likely to paint an optimistic picture of success so as to get the work, so ultimately it has to be your call...
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