How Do I Prove To My Car Insurance Company I am Not At Fault For The Accident

 

September 18, 2007 by fashun · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Auto insurance help 

Reader question:

How do I get car insurance accident proof that it was the other person’s fault, and not my own?

Jackie

Thanks for asking, Jackie.

What many people do not realize is that there is no set algorithm for determining who is at fault when it comes to car insurance accident claims. It is mostly based on common sense, and the decision goes to whoever’s argument and evidence shows that they are correct and not culpable for the accident. You don’t need mathematical logic to win a controversial car insurance claim. The only thing that you are required to know are the laws of driving, and how that affected your car accident and how the other driver ignored these same laws. Many car insurance claims, even those in which both of the drivers are shirking responsibility and blaming the other, can be won with a simple argument pointing out the obvious. It isn’t that hard to know what to say, but some people might need help knowing how to say it, which is where you would hire a car insurance accident claims lawyer.

The biggest factor in a person winning a disputed negligence case for a car insurance accident claim is that, even if the insurance company does not believe that they are right, it may think that it is possible that someone else will think they are, and so they rush to end the whole situation and get the claim taken care of. Car insurance companies mostly exist to help their own customers, and while come are extremely helpful with car insurance claims when the claim maker is not a customer of that company, I’d say that most try to obstruct and give you the lowest balled figures, which your own car insurance company probably does too, but to a lesser extent. When a reasonable argument is made for who was negligent in a certain car insurance claim case, and the insurance company realizes that their own position will probably not hold up in court if a lawsuit is filed, they will probably go ahead and approve the claim. So you don’t need hard cold facts. You just have to be convincing.

I find that the best way to send proof for your case is through letters to the adjuster instead of over the phone, or through emails, if the car insurance company allows that particular means of communication when dealing with claims. This might be because I like to communicate more in writing than over the phone, but it could hold true for many other people too, I think. The reason for this is that you can get all of your ideas down on paper without being interrupted, you can attach any information that the adjuster wouldn’t otherwise be able to see over the phone, and, most important of all, you can edit. The editing is a big one, considering that saying something stupid over the phone when you’re having to act partially on impulse could get you into a lot of trouble with your claim. At least when you write a letter of evidence to your adjuster, you would never get caught saying something like,

“While I was backing up at the stop light, he hit me in the rear!”

While I would suggest admitting negligence in a case where you caused someone to hit you from behind, I hope you can see the point I’m trying to get across. If you feel, though, that you can’t succeed either in the form of the letter or over the phone in proving the negligence of the other driver, then you should hire a car accident lawyer. An attorney would be able to navigate the system and also knows what claims adjusters want in order to prove cases.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.

Cheapest Car Insurance Score – How Do I Find Out My Score?

 

August 31, 2007 by fashun · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Auto insurance help 

You’ve done everything you can to have the cheapest car insurance premium. You take advantage of discounts, you cut down on your driving, car pool, drive safely. You bought the right kind of car with the right kinds of safety features. So why is it that your car insurance premium rates are still higher than you would think they should be? After all, you’re older than twenty five and married, so shouldn’t you be getting a break by now?

Maybe, but one of the biggest influences on car insurance rates is something that follows many people through most of their lives. The credit score. The credit score is something that you might never have thought of as being a reasonable factor in your auto insurance rates, but the car insurance companies think that it actually does have something to do with driving. Not only are people with better credit scores more likely to be reliable customers who pay their premiums on time and don’t change companies too often, but they also, according to statistical data, file fewer claims than do people with lower credit scores.

Insurance companies take the credit report and make an insurance score out of it. This doesn’t necessarily take into account all of the same factors as does your regular credit score, and is more interested in regular payments than a long history. And these scores are the driving influences of high insurance rates among good drivers.

Their use is heavily debated. There have been lawsuits filed against certain car insurance companies for using these so called insurance scores to decide premiums, and many say that they target low income and minority families, because those are the groups in which people are more likely to have bad credit history. For the moment, now, they must be dealt with.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.