This is the story of two car crashes (unfortunately) and how we dealt with them.
I’m hoping this is the last one and that none of you have any issues like these, but if you do, perhaps this post can help.
It should also provide for some interesting discussion. 🙂
Oklahoma Crash
In May of 2014, my wife was stopped at a stop light when a teenage driver ran into her from behind.
The crash was at a relatively slow speed, all involved in the crash were fine with absolutely no injuries, and my wife’s car looked like it had nothing more than a back bumper that needed to be fixed.
In Oklahoma, no matter who causes the wreck, your own insurance pays for the repairs. We had AAA and I’ll cut to the chase now — they were terrific to deal with.
The car, a 2004 Toyota Corolla with roughly 70,000 miles on it (and in GREAT shape), was towed to a nearby garage. There it was checked out and to our great surprise, declared a total loss.
Yep. Fender bender. Total loss.
I looked on Kelly Blue Book to get the value of the car and it came to around $8,000. I was expecting them to offer us something like $7,000 for it. To my surprise they offered $8,238! Sweet!
We took the money, my wife decided she wanted another Corolla, I applied my tried and true car buying strategy on several dealers in our area, and a few days later we had a new (upgraded) 2014 Corolla for $19,490. My wife couldn’t believe all the great add-ons the company had come up with in 10 years.
Colorado Crash
Fast forward a couple years to Thursday, April 21, 2016. Our 2014 Corolla now had 34,449 miles on it and was running well.
My wife was driving with my son in the passenger seat. She was going through a green light when another driver (in a Honda Civic, I believe) ran a red light and crashed into her. There was no record of how fast he was going but it was a good shot. My wife guessed he was going around 45 mph.
He hit her on the driver’s side back door and back tire. The impact spun our car around.
As you might imagine, my wife and son were shaken up pretty badly. They had some bruises and scrapes and are still dealing with some soreness to this day. Their physical part of the ordeal may last for some time.
I was at work when I got a text that said “We’ve been in a car accident. We are ok.” Yikes! I assumed it was more like the fender bender in Oklahoma. I called my wife and she seemed ok and it didn’t sound that bad from her description of it. She told me where she was and I left to pick them up.
When I got there it was apparent that the accident was worse than I expected and what my wife described. The car was badly crushed on one side. But even worse was the fact that my wife limped to my car and my son was holding his arm tenderly.
They got into the car and my wife started crying. She was upset and scared as you might imagine. She was ok by the time we got home.
My wife and son went to the doctor the next day and he thought they just suffered some bruising but he wanted to monitor them to be sure. We are still doing that.
Insurance Companies
In Colorado, you deal with the insurance of the driver who caused the accident. The guy who hit my wife had Allstate and I’ll cut to the chase now — they were “ok” to deal with.
My wife called our insurance first when we got home just to inform them what happened. They asked if we wanted to open a claim. My wife asked if that could increase our insurance rates. They said it could. We declined and called Allstate.
Over the next few days my wife dealt with the Allstate agent who, I found out later asked my wife if he could tape her side of the story to record what happened. She ACCEPTED!!!! Yikes!!! I didn’t find this out until a couple days later that he asked her all these incriminating questions like “Were you distracted?” and “Were you texting?” to try and get her to admit some sort of guilt. Thankfully she didn’t because she didn’t have any guilt, but I was furious that the guy had tried to trick my wife and upset that she agreed to it.
We had a long conversation about how “this guy is not our friend”. We also decided that I would deal with him from here on out.
Allstate determined that our car could be fixed, which was a shock to me because this car was in way worse condition than the other car. They said it would take $9,000 or so to fix it and that was about 90% of the value needed before they would declare it a total loss.
I was on a business trip when I called the Allstate agent and told him I’d just as soon they totaled it because I wasn’t sure they would get the car back in running and safe condition. He gave me a bunch of blah-blah-blah about this is the way they do things, they were working according to the law, etc. I asked him how we’d be compensated for the loss in the car’s value given that it had now been wrecked and would likely be worth much less when resold. He said they’d evaluate that at their discretion after it was fixed. I asked who warranted the work on the car and he said they would not, the shop would have to. I asked again to have it totaled and he again gave me the blah-blah-blah. I told him I wanted to consult an attorney and I’d get back to him.
I later did some research and found this piece titled When is A Vehicle Considered a Total Loss? The basic answer is that a car is totaled when: Cost of Repair + Salvage Value > Actual Cash Value (note in that article that Colorado law requires much more damage to be totaled than Oklahoma does). The cost of repair simply needed to be higher for it to be counted as a total loss. I had told the agent that such an estimate was within his control, but I got blah-blah-blah.
Once I got home I emailed several people at work asking for attorney recommendations. I contacted a couple and basically got this response: “We don’t handle the car damage part of an accident but we’d be more than happy to handle the injury part of the accident.” In other words, there’s no money in the former but plenty in the latter.
I also went to the repair shop where the car had been towed and talked to the guy there. It was a Toyota-owned collision repair shop. After taking to the guy I was convinced that he would not cut corners, would get the car put back together as good as possible, and would warranty his work. So I felt ok with proceeding with the repair. He also told me that it was likely they would find additional damage once they started tearing the car apart. If so, the final costs could be very close to totaling the car.
So I signed the form that gave them the right to begin work on the car. I was resigned to the fact that we’d get the car back and have to fight it out on the lost value for resale.
About a week later Allstate called and said they had indeed found extra damage and the car might be totaled. They called a couple days after that and said we were $74 short from the car being totaled. They said they understood that we would prefer if it was totaled so they would see if they could find the extra money. Three days later they got back to us and said it was totaled.
For this I was grateful and thankful they handled it in this manner.
Offer from Allstate
We got a form on Friday, May 13 with the details. Here’s what they offered us:
- 16,253 for car
- 1,340.87 for tax
- 7.20 DMV fee
- 17,601.07 total
I wanted to see if this was a fair offer (of course), so I checked two sites.
Kelly Blue Book valued our car as follows:
- Very good value of purchased from a private party: $14,415
- Excellent value of purchased from a private party: $14,777
- Fair market price range if purchased from a dealer (based on good or better condition): $14,447 – $17,272
- Fair purchase price if purchased from a dealer: $15,860
- Suggested retail price from dealer: $16,462
Edmunds valued our car as follows at the clean level (second highest):
- Trade In value: $12,686
- Private Party Price: $14,253
- Dealer Retail Price: $15,555
- Certified Used Price: $16,483
Given this info, it appeared that Allstate had given us a fair offer. We accepted and the next Monday my wife took them the title and received the check.
Of course once we accepted the offer, the rental car they had given us needed to be returned the next day. We needed a new car asap. Luckily, I know someone with a great process for saving a ton on buying a new car. 🙂
Unfortunately we didn’t do as well when trying to maximize our settlement for injuries.
K D says
Wow! What a lot of experience you have had with auto accidents in the past couple of years. I noticed that our insurance went up about $100 for the next six month period, while we have not been involved with any claims. I had read that the flip side of cheaper gas was higher insurance rates. I guess we are seeing that now.
Thank you for sharing and I hope this is the end of your experience with accidents.
Mark says
A nice piece. I’m sorry you and your family had to go through that. My family and I have gone through something similar, though neither was as traumatic as your second, and no cars had to be totaled. In both cases, the fault was the other driver’s – both took responsibility immediately. In one case, we had the same insurance company, GEICO, as the other driver, and they were fine to deal with.
I wonder if your experience with Allstate – being only “ok” to deal with – is related to the fact that they were the other driver’s insurance company, not yours, while AAA was your insurance company. I claim (!) no expertise in this field and have no experience with either insurance company; I’m just speculating.
Thanks for sharing your experience.
Coopersmith says
There are so many parts to the equation that we enough but we do not know all. The biggest is the availability of parts and the cost associated with that. The 2004 parts are harder to get than the 2014. So that played into the decision to totaling the 2004 and fix the 2014. Mileage is another factor.
My son while driving to an interview near Grand Rapids hit black ice and hit the concrete median head on. The car was a buy of a lifetime in that it was a 2008 with only 37,000 mile on it and driven by an 80 year old lady who can no longer drive. The car had 45,000 mile on it when it was in the accident. Initial damage estimate was $3500 then they took it apart and found more damage and the price rose quickly. It was eventually fixed but there was this though that they would total the car as we were close to the point of being totaled. My guess is the reason they didn’t was the car was like show room new and low miles. If the car had 70,000 I am sure they would have totaled the car.
By the way…. When I got rid of my 2003 and bought the 2008 my insurance went down by $400 a year. The explanation was the cost to fix and insure the 2003 was higher than the 2008. So if you think you are saving money by driving older model car in most ways you are but you are paying more in insurance as the car ages.
pat says
You were very lucky in both situations in my opinion. Here in WA I have twice had cars totaled through no fault of my own (other driver at fault). Both times the other driver’s insurer made absurdly low offers to compensate me. Both times I claimed against my own insurance because as their insured they have a greater duty to me; the other driver’s insurer owes its greatest duty to its insured, not you, the injured party.
The first time I didn’t fight it hard enough and got less than my rare car was worth. The second time I ended up renting a car for 4 months because it took that long to persuade my insurer that I would sue them if they did not give me a fair price. I looked up the law and regulations in my state and used them to put the insurer on notice of the unfair nature of their offer and what their duty to me as their insured required. They refused to pay most of the car rental even though, as I pointed out to them, the reason I had to rent a car for so long was their own intransigence. I pointed to an offer I made to them at about the 1.5 month stage which was about what they ended up paying after 4 months.
WA has the Insurance Fair Conduct Act, which creates a cause of action against one’s insurer under certain circumstances. I would suggest anyone in a position like mine investigate whether or not their state has a similar law and regs. Also, it’s true that most injury attorneys do not handle the property damage parts of claims, but there are usually a few that do just the property damage and can be incredibly helpful.
Mike H says
Thanks for sharing your accident stories. Your wife and son have been through a lot.
Will you be pursuing injury damages or will that be based on the outcome of monitoring the situation, as you mentioned earlier?
-Mike
ESI says
Maybe.
We are waiting until my wife and son feel 100% and need no medical follow up before we begin the injury damages discussion.
I’ll keep you all informed of progress on this front.
Tom Murin says
As an insurance claims professional for 26+ years, I find this kind of post interesting. Like many other things, insurance claims can be very complicated. That said, I do not believe you are correct about how OK handles properly damage. Did you have a MI policy (one of the very few states with No Fault for property damage)? OK and CO should have the same liability/fault based system. The party that is “at-fault” pays (their insurance carrier pays on their behalf). Of course, determining who is at-fault can be difficult in many cases. That’s why it is easier if you have Collision coverage. You go “First-party” (use your own policy) and fault gets sorted out on the back end – your company will try and collect from the other insurance carrier. You (usually) front your deductible, but that is collected back as well. When you want to go through the other party (“Third-party”), it is a different set of rules. Allstate wasn’t trying to trick you – they were doing their jobs. If their investigation supported it they would have applied some portion of fault to your wife (called comparative negligence) and you would have received less than 100 % of the value of the car. Your total loss calculation is mostly correct (expected rental costs during the repair time is a factor) for a “constructive total loss.” “Actual total loss” is when the repair cost is greater than the value of the car. ” Attorneys don’t want to do property damage since their share of the recovery reduces your net accordingly – so you are going to take a hit. An attorney can’t get you a windfall on property damage like they could on bodily injury. But, it’s not really a windfall since it still comes out of your share of the damages. It’s just that an attorney can generally get a higher award and you don’t know the value of the claim – so you don’t feel like you were shortchanged in any way.
I did auto claims for about 17 years and don’t miss it!
How did things work on the injury side?
ESI says
No, we had an OK policy when in OK.
Here’s the part from Allstate that irked me:
“Over the next few days my wife dealt with the Allstate agent who, I found out later asked my wife if he could tape her side of the story to record what happened. She ACCEPTED!!!! Yikes!!! I didn’t find this out until a couple days later that he asked her all these incriminating questions like “Were you distracted?” and “Were you texting?” to try and get her to admit some sort of guilt.”
From my point of view he wasn’t trying to “find out the facts” — he was trying to get her to say something incriminating. I’ve dealt with lawyers and legal cases for years (in a business setting) and know when someone is trying to position themselves legally. And to take advantage of an innocent person like my wife is just nasty. I know his job is to minimize expenses for his company and he’s willing to do whatever it takes to do that.
Of course that may be a warped perspective, but I’ve found it’s always better to be safe than sorry where legal issues are concerned.
The injury part is still working it’s way out as my wife has some residual pain. Allstate is being a pain with this as well, so we often work through our insurance (AAA) and they deal with Allstate.
I will be contacting an attorney soon to handle the rest of this case for the exact reason you state: “It’s just that an attorney can generally get a higher award.” I’ll let you know how it goes.
I can only imagine what you had to deal with in auto claims. I’m sure you have some great stories!
Tom Murin says
The script for the recorded statement is the same for both the insured and the other party. Yes, information obtained can be used against you. It can be abused, but the alternative is a legal case (lawsuit) and it applies there as well, but you’d be coached by a lawyer and the statements (in a deposition) will take place a long time after the event.
You should consider consulting with the attorney now. There isn’t really a downside to consulting (you don’t have to retain them now), but studies have found that claimants are happier with the overall process when they don’t retain an attorney. It’s not just about the $$ (not saying that’s your prime concern – just putting it out there). Good luck.