Are Car Accident Settlement Calculators Accurate?

After an auto accident, you may wonder how much you could claim to cover your damages. You might try using an online car accident settlement calculator to answer that question. It will ask you a few details about your accident, then produce a dollar amount or range. 

While these calculators provide a rough estimate based on averages and limited input, their results lack legal authority and can be misleading. They may miss factors like the severity of injuries, your personal circumstances, and the negotiation process with insurance companies.

The following article discusses how these calculators work. It will explain how to understand and use the numbers they produce. For a more accurate estimate of your claim’s value, you can consult an experienced personal injury attorney. They can account for the full range of factors and help you seek fair compensation.

Calculators Only Show Estimates

None of the car accident settlement calculators available online creates figures that have any real authority. The amount you see on a tool doesn’t reflect how much you’re legally entitled to claim.

There is no common system used by all car accident settlement calculators. Instead, these systems generate estimates based on some potentially authoritative sources and data about historical payouts by insurers. A website might use the average car accident settlement amount in your state as its starting point, but your accident damages could be much more severe or minor than average.

The accuracy of a car accident settlement calculator will depend on the information it allows you to provide. The system probably can’t account for the peculiarities of your individual case.

How To Evaluate a Car Accident Claim

A personal injury lawyer is the most reliable resource to help determine a fair settlement or insurance payout. You might want a basic idea of what your car accident case would be worth before you decide to proceed.

Below are a few factors that can affect the value of your claim. Online calculators usually try to include these factors at a basic level but often fall short.

Your Vehicle’s Value

Vehicle damage is the most common reason to file an auto insurance claim after an accident. Even minor collisions without injuries can involve expensive repairs and lost vehicle value. Severe accidents can total a vehicle, often making it beyond repair.

Factors that can affect compensation for your vehicle and repairs after a car crash include:

• The vehicle’s initial value
• Depreciation since the initial sale
• The vehicle’s condition and mileage at the time of the collision
• The costs to repair or replace specific car parts

Many online calculators ask for information about your vehicle and the damage it suffered in the accident. The calculator will then produce an estimate of the value of the car, but it may or may not take into account all the details of your vehicle. It might simply produce a figure that is an average of repair costs for vehicles with front-end damage.

Your Injury Claim Value

Personal injury claims can account for a wide array of losses, such as:

• Medical bills, including surgery, medications, diagnostic scans, and other needs
• Lost income during time off work for medical treatment and recovery
• Physical therapy costs
• Mental anguish and therapy costs
• Loss of a bodily function or limb

Like the damage to your vehicle, calculators often refer to charts that set dollar amounts for specific kinds of bodily injuries. These charts use average payouts in similar injury cases.

The problem with these estimates is that human body parts, unlike car parts, are difficult, if not impossible, to replace or repair when severe damage occurs. You can buy medical care, but you can’t simply buy a new body.

Injuries can also produce drastically different impacts depending on the person injured. The loss of a leg, for example, might result in enormous financial, emotional, and psychological damage to a young professional dancer or athlete. The same injury would also be terribly serious to a retired computer programmer, but the valuation of these two injuries is likely to vary because they affect the earning capacity of the two parties differently.

Multipliers for Pain and Suffering

Estimating property damage and medical expenses can be challenging. Measuring noneconomic damages, such as pain and suffering, is even harder.

Physical pain and mental suffering are highly subjective. They can vary significantly depending on the individual and their circumstances. They usually increase with the severity of your injuries.

Most car accident settlement calculators try to beat this uncertainty by using one of a couple of multipliers. They may apply a multiplier, usually between 1.5 and 5, against another line item like medical expenses. The logic is that a more serious injury often produces higher medical expenses and is more likely to result in greater pain and suffering.

More than any other aspect of car accident settlement calculation, the pain and suffering multiplier should be looked at skepticism. There’s little chance it can accurate apply the details of your particular situation.

What if the Insurance Company Offers Less Than the Estimate?

The auto accident settlement process is a negotiation. The first offer you get might not match the actual damages you suffered. The online estimate could also be much lower or higher than a fair settlement value.

An insurance adjuster’s priority is to pay as little as possible to car accident victims while closing claims quickly. Their initial offer will likely be less than the true value of your claim. The insurance company is not putting your best interests first. Believing it does can result in getting less money than you need.

You also probably can’t trust the car accident settlement calculator to verify whether the offer is fair. These tools can’t account for the fluctuation that often happens in settlement negotiations.

Should I Accept the Car Accident Settlement?

Don’t sign an insurance settlement until you know the true value of your accident claim. Once you agree to an offer, you usually can’t seek more compensation later. Settling the case stops you from taking further legal action against the at-fault driver.

Having a strong personal injury attorney on your side can be helpful. They can review the insurance coverage, liability for the accident, and the full extent of your damages. Their legal advice can help you understand whether you received a lowball settlement offer and how much you should seek for your recovery. They can dispute the offer and counter with a demand letter for a fair amount.

Next Step: Car Accident Lawsuits

An insurance company might still refuse to pay what the policy and circumstances necessitate. It might even dispute who the at-fault party was.

Your case might go beyond an insurance claim and become a personal injury lawsuit. A personal injury case allows you to take the at-fault driver or an insurance company to court, where a judge will decide the award. You’ll still need to start the process before the legal deadline.

Get Help With Your Car Accident Settlement

Car accident settlement calculators are not accurate, so you shouldn’t rely on their results. Most calculators fail to gather enough information to adequately determine the amount of your individual claim. An online calculator can still be useful for providing very general estimates, but don’t put too much faith in the amount it supplies.

A lawyer’s advice is frequently much more accurate than a car accident settlement calculator. They can ask questions and process information that is much more detailed and specific to your situation. They often have experience dealing with the insurers involved and with local courts, which helps provide more accurate estimates.

Contact a local car accident attorney to get a realistic assessment of your case. Many lawyers offer free case evaluations for car accident injuries.