Don't listen to people's advice on the internet (including mine
).
For me, it depends on the severity of the accident and injury. If it's a minor fender bender, where the other party is clearly at fault, and there is no injury -- most of the time it's very easy to deal with the guilty parties insurance.
If you have minor injuries and a few minor doctors bills, we've had lawyers tell us to just take them to the other insurance company (or our own) and try to settle without lawyers. But be careful of anything you tell the other insurance company, they will use every word you tell them against you.
If you're in a serious wreck where either your car or body is damaged, that's a whole 'nother ballgame. I would not speak with the guilty parties insurance company at all. Either go through mine or through a lawyer.
To answer your question about filing against your own insurance company, you can do that, they'll take your deductible, they'll make your car whole. Then eventually they will go after the guilty parties insurance company and eventually you'll get your deductible back. It's your call as to how you want to handle it.
One perspective is you pay for insurance, might as well let them do the leg work.
The other one is, you don't want your rates to go up so you try to hide the accident from them. That wont work, they'll know you were in an accident.
