You just got rear-ended.....

I don't have any assets worth protecting yet, business or otherwise (no land/house/etc).
I have assumed my auto insurance policy was enough coverage without anything else. Never had an accident though.

Comprehensive:
500 deductible per occurence

Collision:
500 deductible per occurence

Liability Coverage:
Bodily Injury - 100,000/300,000 per person/per accident
Property Damage Liability - 50,000 per accident

Injury Coverage:
Uninsured/Underinsured Motorist Bodily Injury - 100,000/300,000 per person/per accident
Property Damage Liability - 5,000 per accident
Medical Payments - 100,000 per person

This is good. However, I'd up your Property Damage Liability. There are a lot of cars and trucks on the road that cost more than $50k. You have one small lapse in concentration and hit two 2019 Cadillac Escalades and your $50k gets eaten up quickly.
 
To what end? If nothing hurts when you get off the ambulance, the doctor will tell you to come back if something starts hurting. While you're at it, why not demand CareFlite, "just in case"?
See the post after yours. It stinks that our new reality is a litigious society. It is
Those are the facts.

"Nothing hurts now" can be a matter of adrenaline flow. You can be seriously injured and not have a clue. I was friends with a man who fell out a 3rd floor door. Down to concrete. Severe-fatal head injury. Got up from the ground, walked about 10feet before collapsing, dead.
 
I don't have any assets worth protecting yet, business or otherwise (no land/house/etc).

I have assumed my auto insurance policy was enough coverage without anything else. Never had an accident though.

Comprehensive:
500 deductible per occurence

Collision:
500 deductible per occurence

Liability Coverage:
Bodily Injury - 100,000/300,000 per person/per accident
Property Damage Liability - 50,000 per accident

Injury Coverage:
Uninsured/Underinsured Motorist Bodily Injury - 100,000/300,000 per person/per accident
Property Damage Liability - 5,000 per accident
Medical Payments - 100,000 per person
Not enough.
 
My one and only rear ended was on my old Honda Nighthawk in Boston. Lady hit me hard. I get off the bike, approach her, and very nicely ask to see her insurance. I was worried that the blow from her car might have broken the shaft drive on the bike. She starts giving me a hard time about being late for work etc... I for the first time ever assumed the bad-ass biker persona. I start yelling in my loudest voice (those of you who know me know how loud that is) in the crudest language. She shut up and did what I asked pronto. Gosh that was fun.

The good news is nothing was busted and we both went on our merry. That was the last time I waited in traffic on a bike.
 
See the post after yours. It stinks that our new reality is a litigious society. It is
Those are the facts.

"Nothing hurts now" can be a matter of adrenaline flow. You can be seriously injured and not have a clue. I was friends with a man who fell out a 3rd floor door. Down to concrete. Severe-fatal head injury. Got up from the ground, walked about 10feet before collapsing, dead.

I routinely see people who "weren't injured" at the scene go the hospital days later with broken vertebrae, ribs, and torn spinal discs. Adrenaline is a real thing.
 
I don't have any assets worth protecting yet, business or otherwise (no land/house/etc).

I have assumed my auto insurance policy was enough coverage without anything else. Never had an accident though.

Comprehensive:
500 deductible per occurence

Collision:
500 deductible per occurence

Liability Coverage:
Bodily Injury - 100,000/300,000 per person/per accident
Property Damage Liability - 50,000 per accident

Injury Coverage:
Uninsured/Underinsured Motorist Bodily Injury - 100,000/300,000 per person/per accident
Property Damage Liability - 5,000 per accident
Medical Payments - 100,000 per person

In some cases, the umbrella policy can lower your total bill. In your case, probably not because you already have fairly low limits. But raising your limits slightly and adding the umbrella might cost a lot less than raising your limits to more realistic levels given today's health care costs without the umbrella.

Rich
 
Cops "thinks" she is under the influence, but also seems disinterested in a DWI arrest.
I think that's pretty standard for cases like yours. If the driver is already taking a ride to a hospital, a blood draw will likely be part of the plan. No need to bother with a breath test or starting the process on the scene if you know you're going to get a blood sample from a hospital.

Assuming the car is fixable, which I suspect will be the case, what other concerns will their be?
Are you in a no-fault state or a tort state? What kind of coverage do you have? Does your coverage include rental cars?
 
Scenario-

You are on a 2 lane road and stopped to make a legal left turn onto another street, blinker on, tail lights proven functional. Young driver rams their POS car at 35 mph up your tailpipe and pushes you about, eh....40 ft towards the shoulder. Your car has moderate damage to the trunk, bumper, tail pipe pushed in. Other driver's car is without question totaled.

Cops show up take the report as the other party is being carted off in an ambulance. That driver is loopy, complaining of a head ache and before the cops get their, literally doused herself in purfume and drank three bottles of water, pounding them down. Cops "thinks" she is under the influence, but also seems disinterested in a DWI arrest. You and your passenger have no complaints of injury "right now". Both cars leave on a wrecker as undrivable.

From this point, you have called your well advertised insurance company and tell them, "I pay you to handle these problems for me. Let me know what info you want"

Assuming the car is fixable, which I suspect will be the case, what other concerns will their be? Loss of use? Devaluation? Additional small claims case an option? Or in other words, what hidden issues should be expected at this point? In this scenario, the people are not laywer-up type hood rats that wanna get paid for some false pain and suffering claim. They just want to be made whole.

Sounds like you have it covered other than seeing a doctor (which the insurance company probably will want you to do anyway if they're worth a ****).

One thing to consider is whether or not you want the car fixed. In borderline cases, if you start talking about diminution of value, it may push the car from "repairable" into "totaled" territory.

In my case, rear-end crashes and summer tailgaters are why I have a dual-lens dashcam. The locals don't tailgate because we've all been in the situation of having to stop behind a car that had to stop because a suicidal deer chose that day, time, and place to end it all. Suicide-by-car is epidemic among the antlered crowd these days.

The tourists from the NYC Metro area, however, measure following distance in inches. Even if they're able to pass you, they won't. They're not in a hurry. It's just how they're used to driving. If you try to use the 3-second rule on the LIE, three cars will pull in front of you. Having them on camera pretty much closes the case if one of them rear-ends me.

Rich
 
How much more would you recommend carrying?

$250K minimum property damage, $1M bodily injury, plus another $1M on the umbrella. Raise the last one as you start acquiring assets.

If you're young and inexperienced, they may not want to write $1M on bodily injury. But they'll probably be happy to write it on an umbrella. If you have Auto, Homeowner/Renter, and Umbrella with the same company, it's not unusual for the umbrella to be "free" or nearly so by the time the discounts are factored in. At least looking into it is really a no-brainer.

Rich
 
If you are hurt at all, call a personal injury lawyer.
Besides the billboards and bus stop benches, how do we find the right personal injury lawyer?

BetterCallSaul_BenchAd.jpg
 
See the post after yours. It stinks that our new reality is a litigious society. It is
Those are the facts.

"Nothing hurts now" can be a matter of adrenaline flow. You can be seriously injured and not have a clue. I was friends with a man who fell out a 3rd floor door. Down to concrete. Severe-fatal head injury. Got up from the ground, walked about 10feet before collapsing, dead.
PI lawyers aside. You're not going to get a full workup in the ER if you have no complaints.
 
Last edited:
... The law only applies to the law abiding around here.

Laws only ever apply to the law-abiding.
PI lawyers aside. You're not going to very a full workup in the ER if you have no complaints.

If you arrive from the scene at the slider in the ambulance bay, you're gonna at least get the "welcome aboard" package. And that will involve the secret hand shake and a chest X-ray. Where it goes from there will depend on how appropriate you are and how much blood you get on the linen.
 
If I ever become wealthy enough to not work I want to become a lawyer and do pro bono defense work for the poor
 
Back
Top