Car Accident Claim Settlements: What You Should Know
If you've been the victim of a negligent driver and suffered an injury, you have every right to expect a fair settlement that takes into account your financial losses, your pain, and your suffering -- but figuring out what your claim is worth can be hard to do without some help.
You can bet, however, that the insurance company will have some idea of how your losses should be figured -- but that may not actually be a fair process. Here's what you need to know about how insurance companies assign a dollar value to your claim.
Settlement Calculators
Settlement calculators, like Colossus, are popular tools in the insurance industry today. Designed specifically for insurance adjusters, settlement calculators are electronic tools that aim to break down the settlement process into a carefully defined set of variables. Once relevant information is imputed into the program, a settlement calculator spits out a "recommended settlement range" that insurance companies can use.
A lot of insurance companies are very fixated on the calculators that they use and will fight attempts to push past the recommended range given by one of these calculators very hard. And, unfortunately, settlement calculators often fail to take into account a number of things that can negatively affect your quality of life after an accident.
Things like stress from being physically limited, the tedium of sitting through endless doctor's visits, the frustration that goes along with the claims process, the anxiety that you may feel about getting into another wreck, and the anger you may experience at the negligence of the other driver aren't factored in.
Multipliers
Other insurance companies rely on a time-honored "multiplier" method. Essentially, the insurance company's adjuster will start by adding up all of your "hard" losses. This will include things like the cost of the ambulance to the hospital, the sum total of your medical bills, the wages that you lost due to your injuries, the cost of any medications or therapy. Then, they'll assign a multiplier from 1.5 to 5 and make that the additional amount you are due for pain and suffering.
This approach is almost as bad as the rigid and unfeeling method used by settlement calculators. It's essentially a judgment call on the part of the insurance adjuster whether your injuries are "serious enough" to warrant a multiplier of 3 or 4 (almost nobody gets a 5) instead of a 1.5 or a 2 -- and you can't ever forget that insurance adjusters are paid to keep the company's costs down.
A fair settlement is one that takes all of your losses -- both physical and emotional -- into account. It's not something that should be wholly mechanical, the way that a settlement calculator is. It also shouldn't be wholly subjective, the way the multiplier method is. That's why an auto accident attorney often has to negotiate hard to push past the insurance company's standard methods of calculating a settlement in order to get a fair deal.
If you are in need of auto accident attorney services today, locate and contact a professional near you.