Car Accident? Ask an Adjuster

The only people we have insured that have $0 deductibles are a few people who live out in the country on gravel roads, lots of windshield chips/cracks. They turn in glass claims at least once a year. Honestly though, if you turn in too many claims, even not-at-fault claims, you're going to either get canceled, or if you are lucky the company might give you the option of raising your deductible rather than cancelling you. Generally, if we have someone turn in 3 or 4 claims in a 12-18 month period, regardless of how small they are, we're probably going to cancel them(or make them go toa $1000 deductible so they stop filing ticky-tack claims)

Insurance exists to protect you from a catastrophic loss that you can't afford to take care of on your own, it doesn't exist to fix every minor thing wrong with your car/house.

Long time lurker at FoH, and this thread is kinda right up my alley. I ended up rear ending a guy a few months back because he brake checked me, I was about a car and a half, maybe away from him, but couldn't stop in time. In the police report, he admitted to the officer that he braked with no real purpose because felt that I was driving too closely. Now, I'm uninsured, and his insurance company wants me to pay them all the damages to his vehicle. I'm feeling like they shouldn't have honored his claim, because he kinda provoked the accident and it should've been a no fault thing. I talked to his insurance company and I guess they never even had a copy of the police report for some reason. They're going to get back to me, but what do you think the chances of them just walking away from the whole thing are?

I can't find any information by googling it. For reference the accident happened in New Hampshire.

Did the police officer issue any tickets? If you received a ticket, you're probably boned and are going to be treated like you were completely at fault(and a court would probably uphold that even if you tried to fight it, if you received a ticket)

Hate to say it, but 95% of the time, the person in the rear in a rear-ending incident is found at fault, regardless of the circumstances. About the only time I've seen the rear person excused from fault is in the case of extreme inclimate weather(sleeting, or a foot of snow or something), and even then there's still partial fault, maybe just not total fault.

I'll go with Vvoid's assessment, you're somewhere in the range of fairly to totally fucked

A couple of years ago my kid was hit by a car, he was walking. He spent a couple of months in the hospital, the insurance part still confuses me to this day. They used the drivers insurance until it was maxed out on his hospital bills. Then it switched to my auto insurance to cover the medical bills, even though he was a pedestrian. Then when that was maxed out they used my health insurance. Why did they use my auto insurance when he was a pedestrian? (I did carry him on both my health and auto policy)

and a 2nd question. Would (did) my insurance company go after the driver to recover any of the medical expenses?

Thanks

It depends a bit on your state specific laws, but a lot of states cover auto-related injuries off of your optional medical coverage(med pay), or even state required PIP(personal injury protection). Your liability or uninsured/underinsured only applies if you are in the car in general, but those med pay/PIP coverages are a lot broader. We've had people covered by those who were working underneath their car and it fell on them, rolled over their foot, and all sorts of crazy stuff when they weren't actually in the car. I would assume the med pay/PIP coverage probably wasn't anywhere near the amount of your full liability limits (might be something like 5K or 10K when your liability is 100K or whatever). Again it depends on state laws, but I dont think insurance companies generally seek to recover PIP/Med pay payments.

It's hard to say if your insurance company would have gone after the other driver personally once his insurance limits were exhausted. Some of it might depend on what his actual limits were, and what they realistically thought they could get out of the guy. If you work a minimum wage job and have no assets, they probably won't bother coming after you, regardless of what your insurance paid. If you have a 6-figure job and a lot of assets, you better have some very high liability limits, because they'll come after you if your insurance isn't enough coverage. Insurance companies aren't dumb. They aren't going to waste the legal cost of suing someone if they know they don't have any way to realistically pay the damages assessed against them, they aren't in it for moral victories or anything of that sort. They're only going to be suing someone personally if they obviouslly have enough money to possibly pay what they think they will be awarded.

We try to stress to people all the time who we know have a lot of income & assets that they really need high liability limits, or even an umbrella to protect them. You don't want to be sitting there with hundreds of thousands, or millions of dollars in assets and only $25,000 liability on your vehicle. Hell, at that point even $100,000 isnt enough to protect you. In most states you can get a million dollar umbrella policy for a couple hundred bucks a year, it's stupid not to if you have a good income and are pretty well off. It's a pittance for protection from a lawyer coming after you for everything you have if you hurt someone really bad.

Damn straight about never swerving unless it's life threatening. I had a oncoming car in a snowy day drift fully into my lane going about 20mph. I swerved to avoid and ended up hitting a dumpster. $3.5k in repair for the axel, wheel, and bumper/panel damage. The fucker kept on driving and I couldn't get his damn license number running in the snow. It was treated as a single car collision. My insurance agent told me next time, just get hit with him in my lane. It would have cost me $3k cheaper in the total amount they had to raise my rates.