For Goodness Sake – Don’t Leave Your Car in Storage!

If you have collision insurance (aka full coverage) for your car, your insurance company will inspect your car and pay you promptly for the damage.  If you don’t have this coverage, you can make a claim against the car that caused the accident to collect money to fix your car (or the book value of your car if it is “totaled.”) This can sometimes happen quickly as well.  If you are hit in the rear by somebody that insured with, let’s say, GEICO, they will come and inspect your car and pay you for the damages or book value.  This will seem not much different than if you had full coverage (and there’s no deductible.)  That’s the best case scenario, but if the other car doesn’t have insurance, you are out of luck for collecting your property damage.  There’s nothing anybody can do about it, so you either have to fix or junk your car.  Think about that next time you renew your auto insurance.

There are other scenarios as well.  If how the accident happened is not clear, your attorney cannot settle your property damage claim quickly.  For example, there is often a “questions of lights” where both drivers claim they had the light.  It’s very frustrating when you know you had the green and the other guy came racing through a red light, but in such cases, it will take some time to work things out.  It may be necessary to contact witnesses and in some cases, there may need to depositions.  You need to either repair your car (and hope to get the money back later) or junk it.  You don’t want to run up huge bills leaving it in storage.  If you have a driveway or garage you can leave it there.  Please don’t call your lawyer every day asking them to settle your property damage unless you want to get only 50% of the value.  That’s all the insurance company can offer without more evidence.