What Is the Typical Settlement for a Car Accident?

How much are your damages worth?

If you are in a car accident and you meet with a good personal injury attorney to discuss your accident, one of the first things you will hear is that it is impossible to generalize how much you should expect to recover. Every insurance company is different, and even insurance adjusters within the same company are different. Of course, there are some general principles that guide the discussion and negotiation.

Damage Types

A settlement for a car accident is not nearly so simple as just throwing out a specific amount of money. Instead, you have analyze the type and amount of damages that you have sustained. Potential damages typically include medical expenses, property damage, pain and suffering and lost income.

Medical Expenses

The most commonly recovered damages are medical expenses. For example, another driver crashes into the side of your car and breaks your arm. You will obviously incur significant medical expenses for the treatment of your arm, including emergency room fees, physician fees, prescription costs, surgical fees and treatment costs, including physical therapy. Assuming liability is clear, you should have no problem recovering your medical expenses dollar for dollar even if your own health insurance provider paid for some of those costs. If you had surgery as a result of the accident and the total surgery bill was $20,000, you should be able to recover $20,000.

Pain and Suffering

It is hard to put a dollar value on how much pain and suffering you have endured, but in the end, that is how the law works. As a general rule, most insurance adjusters will consider pain and suffering damages equal to about one to five times your medical expenses. So if you have $20,000 in medical expenses, you should expect about $20,000 to $100,000 in pain and suffering damages. Within that range, multiple factors can influence the amount, including whether your injuries involved broken bones or just soft tissue, and how long the recovery period takes.

Lost Income

Most of the time car accident victims have to lose work, even if its just for one day while they visit the emergency room. You should be able to recover the value of your missed work even if you used sick days or vacation days. So, if you earn $20 per hour and you missed a full 40-hour work week, you should expect to recover $800 in lost income damages.

Property Damage

Like medical expenses, you should also be able to recover property damages dollar for dollar. If your car was totaled but was worth $15,000 just before the accident, you should recover $15,000.

Warning

Many people do not drive with enough auto insurance. When you sue another driver, you are in effect suing the insurance company, since it is the insurance company who will defend the lawsuit and provide the settlement money. Every insurance policy has a policy limit. Some states allow policy limits of as little as $25,000. So even if you can prove damages worth $100,000, you will only recover the policy limit of $25,000. You would then have to go after the driver personally to try and collect the remaining $75,000.

References

• NOLO: Car Accidents