rear ended - the fun begins

[nostatic]

Yeah, last Aug. She's awesome.

[scottmandue]

Originally Posted by look 171

Todd, I was rear ended about 6 weeks ago near the 405 and Venice Blvd. Scuff and a couple of scratches on the bumper. Her plastic grill was broken. The woman claimed it was road rage on my part and her goddamn insurance claims guy completely blew me off saying they would not pay to fix my damage and that they will come collect from my insurance co. which is AAA. I made a claim with AAA and I'm still waiting to hear from them. AAA agrees to pay and fix my damage, but I am afraid that they will just let it go and not fight it due to the low dollar damage at only 850 dollars and make that my fault.

What?




I was certain Cali was a no fault = ANY rear end is the fault of the person in the back automobile?

[Zeke]

Originally Posted by nostatic

Have an appt with my ortho for Fri. Neither of us are in distress so I can't see spending half the night at the ER.

You may be doing the right thing. The ER is for a sense of urgency. However, it is known that the real injuries take some time to manifest as several of us have pointed out. Just make sure you get the exams and reports thereof. If needed in the future, they will be there.

My wife delayed going in for treatment and that's what worked against her. In fact, she did seek treatment from an orthopod recommended by her internist and that doctor's office told her they didn't treat accident victims where the other party was at fault. This happened more than once. She finally offered up her (our) own insurance and was sent to rehab for 3 months.

This is the real reason for the ER. They have to take you regardless of whose insurance or no insurance. The may refer you to a doc and rehab w/o your having to pay your deducatable. My wife did recover her out of pocket medical expense. That was never a problem. But any future treatment or rehab was going to continue to be her responsibility.

And yes, the other driver's ins co made noises about who was going in what direction. You really do need some witnesses as to what happened. What actually happened to my wife and my car is that the other driver reacted to traffic starting to move and drove into the back of my car from a dead stop. She was apparently *distracted.*

[Zeke]

I got rear ended on the strip in Las Vegas. We exchanged info and when I got home to CA they told me to GFM. That was it.

An injury or the possibility of an injury brings about paperwork that doesn't exist w/o one. If you get nailed in a parking lot fender bender, you better say you jambed your finger or something because once the parties to the incident leave the premises, it's their word against yours.

[911SauCy]

I had a VERY CLOSE CALL TODAY...

Read this thread early this morning, and headed out. While driving around tarnation on sales calls a lady behind me in traffic got rear-ended and almost pushed into me...like less than an inch.

Counting my blessings.

[onlycafe]

best of luck to you, hope all turns out well.

[rusnak]

Congratulations, Todd! I have not yet found a crazy enough woman to wanna marry me.

[look 171]

Originally Posted by speeder

You get in a lot of weird situations, that's for sure. This board is an endless source of interesting data on the human experience that I will never actually see down here on earth.

All in the same week with the pipe falling off the trash truck. come on by and I will buy you a beer. I am the siht magnet for sure.

[look 171]

Originally Posted by scottmandue

What?




I was certain Cali was a no fault = ANY rear end is the fault of the person in the back automobile?

I was told that also, but you learn something new everyday. I will let AAA deal with it. there are *******s in every industry, their adjuster is sure one of them. He's got nothing to lose by doing so. I would have done the same thing if my job depends on it. Well, it should look good for him. I really hope AAA will step up to the plate and fight even if its a few bucks.

[Bill Douglas]

Good luck Todd.

I carry cheap disposable cameras in my cars. I just shove them under the seat and forget about them until I need them. If there is an accident I take photos of the cars the other person, the cop, anything I can think of at the time. Make sure to get a photo including the other persons licence plate. Then get their name and address. Get the cops police number too. People always change their tune the next day and arn't so agreeable about accepting blame so it sure helps to have their address for serving papers etc.

[Rot 911]

You can bifurcate your claim with the other person's insurance company. Tell them you want to settle the car damage issue now and will settle the injury/pain and suffering issue when you have a better idea as to any possible injuries. This is how I generally deal with the insurance companies for my clients. They are used to dealing with bifurcated claims.

They are also becoming more acquainted with "diminished value" claims, but the onus is on you to come up with a number.

[sck007]

Do you have PIP coverage(personal injury protection)? If so, just open the claim and run your medical expenses, lost wages(sick/vacation leave), etc. Of course it is capped by your policy limits usually 5-10K. Use these bills, lost wages, etc. as your support for settlement plus your pain and suffering.

By law you're required to carry the liability but not the PIP. Looks like everyone above has pretty much covered the rest. You may want to do a search on OTF because I have seen several threads in the past year on the same subject matter.

I have been rear ended 4 times. Almost sounds like a bad prison movie...

Good luck!

[nostatic]

Brief update - talked with SF. The other guy admitted fault and things are going forward. I got my own estimate today but will take it to another shop on Fri so their guy can look at it and then (assuming no huge difference in opinion) they'll cut a check and I can take it wherever I want. Rental car will be covered.

Have 2 years to settle the medical side, will wait until we both are checked out and not having issues then sort that out. I see my ortho Fri.

The diminished value is a pita. Basically I have to find an "expert" who will look at the car after the repairs and determine if market value is less. I argued that I have essentially a gold standard - I go to Carmax, tell them it was hit, they inspect, and give me an offer with a note of what the offer would have been had it been accident free. The guy said that would likely be rejected. I asked for a list of acceptable "experts" and they don't have that. Supposedly an appraiser (that I have to pay out of pocket and then can't recover).

So some good, some "screw you."

[john70t]

Originally Posted by Zeke

An injury or the possibility of an injury brings about paperwork that doesn't exist w/o one. If you get nailed in a parking lot fender bender, you better say you jambed your finger or something because once the parties to the incident leave the premises, it's their word against yours.

Very sad state of affairs these days.

Insurance defrauds its clients, and dumps its contractual responsibility on the medical industry.
Then medical costs rise as a result.

[DARISC]

Todd, glad you're OK!

FWIW, from my experience, since you have injuries, their ins. co. WILL soon make you an offer to settle. Do NOT take their first offer as you are still seeing your doctor (make it a point to be).

The adjuster will go away and WILL come back soon to see if you are ready to accept their first offer, plus whatever additional med. bills have accrued. Tell them, absolutely not. Bear in mind that the adjuster REALLY wants you to sign off and will ask how much you want.

If the original settlement offer was, e.g. $3500, including all your med. exp., say, No way! My neck and back injuries may come back to haunt me in another 8 months and you won't be checking on me then! My idea of a fair settlement including all my pain and suffering is $12000! I really hope you're not going to force me to get my lawyer involved in this! Whether or not it will be visible to you, the adjuster will flinch - they do NOT want a suit in such a small (to them) money matter.

The adjuster will tell you they'll have to get back to you, and WILL get back to you with either what you asked for (in which case you asked for too little) or some figure MUCH higher than their lowball first offer.

That's the way they work. BTDT four different times after being involved in injury accidents, none of which were my fault. My settlements ranged from one and a half to three times the original offers (injuries not that serious and all small potatoes, but MUCH bigger potatoes than if I'd settled right away)

A couple months ago, while pulling into a diagonal parking lot space, a lady backing out across the aisle backed into my rear corner doing $2100 damage.

She asked if anyone was hurt and apologized profusely. She was insured with State Farm, we exchanged info.and parted company. I did NOT call her ins. Agent, I called MY agent (AAA). My agent asked if there were injuries (none) and asked if I'd spoken with the other ins. Co. I said no, he said, Good. I'd like to record your description of what happened and well contact them and take care of everything.

I say, Great! Oh, I got an estimate from the body shop I'd like to have repair it. They said they're on your list. Fine, he said, but you needn't have gotten an estimate, we do our own. You can give them your car now if you like. You're covered, whether or not the other party admits to fault. I'll call the ins. co. And get back to you.

He got back to me that same day, the other ins. co. accepted fault, and it was a done deal. BTW, my agent told me that, had they denied fault, my co., based on my recorded statement would have fought the case for me.

Bottom line, I'll always go to my ins. co. first and expect them to take care of me. And, if injured, will NEVER take the first settlement offer.

[nostatic]

Thanks for the input from everyone. Seems that experiences are all over the map but nice to have data points. If I had gotten any pushback from SF wrt fault or process I would have tossed it to my insurance company. At this point it seems straightforward at least for the damages to the car. The medical I'll sort out as things come up. I'll have paperwork for every doc/chiro visit and won't sign a release until I've got a thumbs up from my ortho (who is *really* good). I know that SF wants to put this to bed and I recall getting a quick offer to settle some years back for an accident I was in (other guy's fault). I don't even recall the details though.

uh oh - obviously I have memory loss from this accident

[speeder]

As for having an accident on your record, I thought that only mattered if you were at fault(?)

[Steve Carlton]

You should be able to pick out whatever body shop you want and they should be able to work it out with SF on their bill. I'd find the best shop with the reputation for doing perfect work and use them.

Your diminished value is going to be the accident on your Carfax later on. That has nothing to do with an appraiser looking for evidence of accident repair. I don't know, but I'd expect an accident on a Carfax to hurt the car by about $2K. How much less would you want to pay for a car like yours that has an accident on the Carfax?

[nostatic]

I went round and round with the claims guy on that. He said they have to have an expert appraiser. I said I'll have a real market example - a real price not some made up number. I would expect about a 10-20% drop in value due to something appearing on carfax.

[Rick Lee]

My appraiser told me I'd be lucky for State Farm not to come after me for appreciation after putting a whole new exhaust system on a 60k mile car. Since the accident didn't show on Carfax, I let it go. When that pedestrian claimed I hit her two yrs. later and USAA paid for her ambulance ride only, that did show as an accident on Carfax. I was stunned with the guy who wanted to buy it asked me about that.