Here we go, my accident journey

[chrismahoney23]

Hi all,

so about 2 weeks ago, a guy in a truck pulls out making an illegal left turn leaving me no where to go. My car made contact with the side of his truck and took out the whole front end of the car. I have video but for legal reasons I’ll leave that off here.

At fault drivers insurance has done a good job of communicating and have officially accepted liability. My insurance is taking care of all the repairs etc as I’m in a no fault state.

Current total in repairs is around $19,000 and about 6 weeks.

the car is only 6 months old and only 2,900 miles on her

I have a couple issues to prepare for currently with loss of use claim and eventually diminished value claim but I’m hoping his insurance company continue to act appropriately here. Any tips or advice here would be greatly appreciated.

Just wanted to open this thread to follow the journey and get other people’s experiences on what to do and not to do moving forward.

thanks all

 

[Rockster]

I successfully made a diminished value claim against Progressive, one of the most hostile companies towards diminished value claims out there. It went all the way to a jury trial. My advice is to first make sure that the repairs are made to your complete satisfaction and not mention a word about diminished value until the repairs are complete.

It helps significantly if you have great photos of not only the damaged vehicle but also the vehicle in its undamaged state prior to the accident.

I was fortunate to have relatively local a company that specializes in diminished value appraisals. They were very thorough and credible. It’s important that the diminished value appraisal be of high quality, thorough, and defensible. In my case, I benefited from the appraisal company being local because the appraiser was my expert witness at the trial. The appraisal company I used did not have an attorney on staff but they had a partnership with an attorney who was experienced in diminished value claims and this attorney served as our attorney in the matter.

It’s quite possible that your DV claim will not become so contentious as to require anything more than an expert diminished value appraisal that you hand over to the at-fault insurance company, but you never know.

Let me know if you want the name of my DV appraiser. I doubt that he’d trek to FL to be an expert witness (but you never know!) but at least you know he’s going to provide an appraisal that’s above reproach.

As for loss of use claims, I have no experience there. It’s my understanding that the insurance company is only obligated to provide a vehicle for your use and unless you can show that your Tesla vehicle was instrumental in providing a revenue stream of some sort that a loss of use claim is a very steep uphill battle. But, I could be full of it here.

 

[chrismahoney23]

I successfully made a diminished value claim against Progressive, one of the most hostile companies towards diminished value claims out there. It went all the way to a jury trial. My advice is to first make sure that the repairs are made to your complete satisfaction and not mention a word about diminished value until the repairs are complete.

It helps significantly if you have great photos of not only the damaged vehicle but also the vehicle in its undamaged state prior to the accident.

I was fortunate to have relatively local a company that specializes in diminished value appraisals. They were very thorough and credible. It’s important that the diminished value appraisal be of high quality, thorough, and defensible. In my case, I benefited from the appraisal company being local because the appraiser was my expert witness at the trial. The appraisal company I used did not have an attorney on staff but they had a partnership with an attorney who was experienced in diminished value claims and this attorney served as our attorney in the matter.

It’s quite possible that your DV claim will not become so contentious as to require anything more than an expert diminished value appraisal that you hand over to the at-fault insurance company, but you never know.

Let me know if you want the name of my DV appraiser. I doubt that he’d trek to FL to be an expert witness (but you never know!) but at least you know he’s going to provide an appraisal that’s above reproach.

As for loss of use claims, I have no experience there. It’s my understanding that the insurance company is only obligated to provide a vehicle for your use and unless you can show that your Tesla vehicle was instrumental in providing a revenue stream of some sort that a loss of use claim is a very steep uphill battle. But, I could be full of it here.

thanks for that information there.

the other guys insurance is Usaa and they’ve been good up to this point so fingers crossed they are as forthcoming with these two claims as they have been so far.

my initial hope was that it would be totaled and I could just get a check and go out and replace the vehicle right now without having to deal with diminished value, loss of use and now having a 6 month old car with a crash on its record going forward, but I doubt the repair costs will be enough to have them total it out.

 

[OCR1]

What was the purchase price of the car? Between the $19K in damages (which may go up once they begin doing the work) plus the potential DV claim, plus the cost of six weeks of rental coverage, it might be enough to argue that they total the car. The salvage value of the car plus the repair/DV/rental costs may exceed the purchase price of a new one. Unfortunately if you have FSD that raises the value of the car and it can’t be transferred to a new purchase even if they total the car.

USAA is a great company, probably as good as any other insurance company to work with. That being said, no insurance company is going to voluntarily offer DV compensation. But if you negotiate aggressively, submit a professional appraisal, and let them know you will hire an attorney if they can’t reach an acceptable agreement, you have a good chance of getting something.

 

[dmurphy]

thanks for that information there.

the other guys insurance is Usaa and they’ve been good up to this point so fingers crossed they are as forthcoming with these two claims as they have been so far.

my initial hope was that it would be totaled and I could just get a check and go out and replace the vehicle right now without having to deal with diminished value, loss of use and now having a 6 month old car with a crash on its record going forward, but I doubt the repair costs will be enough to have them total it out.

Sorry to say, but I don’t think you’re going to be anywhere near totaling. This isn’t going to be pretty. My advice is to hold tight and pursue the DV claim as much as you can.

My sob story: Our year and a half old Enclave had a book value of $32k. When a deer decided to jump in front of it, it took 5 months, 4 tow trucks, 2 body shops, 1 bankruptcy (first body shop), 1 GM plant strike and $21k to get it back. And it still wasn’t right. After the 3rd post-repair issue, I sold it for $20k and bought a Model X instead.

The pre-deer value was too high to total the vehicle out, but the repair depreciated it so much I had to sell it for less than the repair cost. And because the deer was, well, no longer with it, I couldn’t exactly go after him for a diminished value claim. There’s not a dang thing I could do about any of it.

 

[chrismahoney23]

What was the purchase price of the car? Between the $19K in damages (which may go up once they begin doing the work) plus the potential DV claim, plus the cost of six weeks of rental coverage, it might be enough to argue that they total the car. The salvage value of the car plus the repair/DV/rental costs may exceed the purchase price of a new one. Unfortunately if you have FSD that raises the value of the car and it can’t be transferred to a new purchase even if they total the car.

USAA is a great company, probably as good as any other insurance company to work with. That being said, no insurance company is going to voluntarily offer DV compensation. But if you negotiate aggressively, submit a professional appraisal, and let them know you will hire an attorney if they can’t reach an acceptable agreement, you have a good chance of getting something.

it’s a 2020 Performance Model 3 purchased in March 2020. The other guys insurance could potentially have a limits issue also.

if they total it, from my research it looks like they could get about $30,000-$35,000 for the car as it sits. It seems the Tesla salvage market is very buoyant right now. I have been pushing for a total, especially as they have accepted liability to my insurance could just settle things with me and then figure it all out with USAA. This option from my calculations would also guarantee the avoidance of the limits issue.

it’s just a lot of stress dealing with everything when the accident itself was not my fault whatsoever.

 

[katbc]

it’s a 2020 Performance Model 3 purchased in March 2020. The other guys insurance could potentially have a limits issue also.

if they total it, from my research it looks like they could get about $30,000-$35,000 for the car as it sits. It seems the Tesla salvage market is very buoyant right now. I have been pushing for a total, especially as they have accepted liability to my insurance could just settle things with me and then figure it all out with USAA. This option from my calculations would also guarantee the avoidance of the limits issue.

it’s just a lot of stress dealing with everything when the accident itself was not my fault whatsoever.

Do you have photos of the damage? If so, can you block out the license plate and share them? I'm sorry to hear about the insurance headache. We are about to go through it. We believe our car should be totalled.. its a crazy amount of damage, but we aren't sure what the insurance company will do. We are in Canada, so things may be drastically different.

 

[katbc]

Do you have photos of the damage? If so, can you block out the license plate and share them? I'm sorry to hear about the insurance headache. We are about to go through it. We believe our car should be totalled.. its a crazy amount of damage, but we aren't sure what the insurance company will do. We are in Canada, so things may be drastically different.

I just saw that you posted on my thread.. thanks

 

[chrismahoney23]

So we are now up to $20,000 in repairs. My estimated Diminished Value is about $7500 from research and looks like loss of use could be 3 months so maybe around $7000 (both diminished value and loss of use would have to be negotiated with at fault insurance).

hoping we can total so they can pay me out so I don’t have to wait 3 months to get my car back and they can sell the car at salvage and then go after at fault insurance for the remaining funds which is likely less than the repairs + diminished value and loss of use.

hopefully get some more info Monday.

 

[chrismahoney23]

Do you have photos of the damage? If so, can you block out the license plate and share them? I'm sorry to hear about the insurance headache. We are about to go through it. We believe our car should be totalled.. its a crazy amount of damage, but we aren't sure what the insurance company will do. We are in Canada, so things may be drastically different.

 

[katbc]

Thanks for sharing those. It gives me an idea of what ours might be. The front left wheel was completely ripped out and barely hanging in there, it got scraped along by the tow truck - was such a mess to see. I guess if the front motor was affected, that's another expensive fix. Gosh, it's so hard to know. We are expecting to find out soon what the estimate will be. I'll update as it goes along. It sucks that we could walk away with a repaired car that is suddenly worth significantly less, no one wants to buy a vehicle with that kind of damage.

 

[chrismahoney23]

Thanks for sharing those. It gives me an idea of what ours might be. The front left wheel was completely ripped out and barely hanging in there, it got scraped along by the tow truck - was such a mess to see. I guess if the front motor was affected, that's another expensive fix. Gosh, it's so hard to know. We are expecting to find out soon what the estimate will be. I'll update as it goes along. It sucks that we could walk away with a repaired car that is suddenly worth significantly less, no one wants to buy a vehicle with that kind of damage.

For sure. My guess is, you’ll have it totaled. I found this really good website that shows salavage model 3s sold prices so you can see how much these things sell for at auction and the level of damage incurred. There’s a really spread of cars that clearly deserved to be totaled and then there is also a lot there that don’t look too bad but were also totaled. Here’s the link. https://en.bidfax.info/tesla/model-3/f/to-year=2021/

It helped me get a better idea of where I’m at.

 

[goldengate]

USAA is the best out there so you lucked out. But you should not be negotiating with them.... your insurance company should do that on your behalf. That's what you pay them for. If they can't reach a final resolution then you can step in.

 

[chrismahoney23]

USAA is the best out there so you lucked out. But you should not be negotiating with them.... your insurance company should do that on your behalf. That's what you pay them for. If they can't reach a final resolution then you can step in.

ive been told that for diminished value and loss of use it will be direct with USAA and they will have to settle with me individually.

my insurance deal with making the car back to what it was before the crash and then go after his insurance for reimbursement of those costs as I understand it. As far as DV and Loss of Use, I’m on my own with USAA direct for that.

they’ve been very helpful so far but just hope they continue that once I put in the claim for the DV and loss of use amounts I’m expecting.

 

[Lightrod]

ive been told that for diminished value and loss of use it will be direct with USAA and they will have to settle with me individually.

my insurance deal with making the car back to what it was before the crash and then go after his insurance for reimbursement of those costs as I understand it. As far as DV and Loss of Use, I’m on my own with USAA direct for that.

they’ve been very helpful so far but just hope they continue that once I put in the claim for the DV and loss of use amounts I’m expecting.

Thanks for sharing those. It gives me an idea of what ours might be. The front left wheel was completely ripped out and barely hanging in there, it got scraped along by the tow truck - was such a mess to see. I guess if the front motor was affected, that's another expensive fix. Gosh, it's so hard to know. We are expecting to find out soon what the estimate will be. I'll update as it goes along. It sucks that we could walk away with a repaired car that is suddenly worth significantly less, no one wants to buy a vehicle with that kind of damage.[/

So we are now up to $20,000 in repairs. My estimated Diminished Value is about $7500 from research and looks like loss of use could be 3 months so maybe around $7000 (both diminished value and loss of use would have to be negotiated with at fault insurance).

hoping we can total so they can pay me out so I don’t have to wait 3 months to get my car back and they can sell the car at salvage and then go after at fault insurance for the remaining funds which is likely less than the repairs + diminished value and loss of use.

hopefully get some more info Monday.

What are you using to determine the DV loss? I am in the same boat and have about 14,000 in repairs being made to my 2018 AWD.

 

[katbc]

@Lightrod are you in the states? If so, @chrismahoney23 's answers will be more helpful for you as we are in Canada. I think the tricky thing for everyone though is if given the choice, most people don't want to buy a vehicle that's had significant repair done to it. We've had friends admit they wouldn't buy our car even if it was crazy cheap. We are getting legal counsel to help determine DV, so if that's available to you it might be worth it. We had planned to trade the model 3 in next year for a different model and now we either don't qualify for the trade in program, or we will get less for it.

 

[caroline115]

It's a shame this happened to you guys. No-fault insurance usually paves the way for simpler claims, better coverage, and fewer disputes. But that all depends on the fine print of your insurance and your provider. This is why it's best to insure your car with reliable companies and have an extensive chat with them regarding the terms of the insurance you are availing. You can read more about "no fault states" and insurance here: Is Alberta Next for No-Fault Car Insurance? | Surex. In the end, insurance claims will always be a pain, it will just depend on your insurance company if they're gonna make it easier for you in your situation. Insurance will help you save money from unwanted accidents, but it won't save you from the headaches.

 

[dmurphy]

It's a shame this happened to you guys. No-fault insurance usually paves the way for simpler claims, better coverage, and fewer disputes. But that all depends on the fine print of your insurance and your provider. This is why it's best to insure your car with reliable companies and have an extensive chat with them regarding the terms of the insurance you are availing. You can read more about "no fault states" and insurance here: Is Alberta Next for No-Fault Car Insurance? | Surex. In the end, insurance claims will always be a pain, it will just depend on your insurance company if they're gonna make it easier for you in your situation. Insurance will help you save money from unwanted accidents, but it won't save you from the headaches.

I don’t know Canadian law, but here in the US, “no fault” insurance is purely in the domain of injury. Collision and property damage are still very much fault-based.