Wonder why car ins. premuiums are so high?

[Icemaster]

A week and a half ago, my wife is driving home from the grocery and gets sideswiped by a Land Cruiser that pulls away from the mailbox on the side of the road - tags her just at the front fender and drags all the way down the side. It's a decent mess, going to need two doors, and a fender replaced, and a quarter re-worked.

No ones hurt, and it's an amicable discussion, the driver of the Toyota apologizes profusely, takes responsibility for it, and takes the ticket when the cops come and do the report. Everything is fine and dandy, notify our insurance just for record purposes, and file the claim with the OP insurance carrier, they're completely professional about it all (so far...).

This is what I find in the mailbox when I get home from work today:




That's not including the 4 phone calls from lawyers and 3 from chiropractors yesterday evening (guess the report made it to public records....).

WTF??? Granted, yes there are cases in which attorneys are needed, especially when it comes to dealing with claims adjusters with certain insurance companies. But holy crap. It's not difficult for someone to get one of these things and think "Hey I hit the lottery!!!", what IS difficult is for that same moron to put togerther that he, along with all the other folks that ambulance chase, have just hit the slightly less impressionable, folks right in the wallet.

Stuff like this makes me take a second look at tort reform.


Edit for spelling.