The driver is personally liable for damage they caused, so if you're confident you have something that would hold up in court, then recovering the repair costs via small claims is worthwhile. Insurance companies often seem to be keen to resolve things at minimal hassle to them, presumably because it will often cost them more to spend lots of time figuring out who is right.
We had a transit hit us when we were stationary, and the driver made up a story completely at odds with the facts and the damage he caused - his insurance company naturally took his side and would only go to 50:50 and our insurance company wasn't keen to dispute matters on our behalf. We wrote the driver a sternly worded letter before action indicating our intention to recover our losses from him personally, and copied it to his employer. He did a runner and his employer (whose policy it was) instructed their insurer to pay up
