This past week my wife, Karen, was in a car accident that totaled the car. She was going 20-25 mph and the teen driving the other car was probably going 25-30 mph. He was coming downhill and turning a corner on top of 1 inch of newly fallen snow and lost control. He could not stop, probably slammed on the brakes, and slide across to the other lane and directly into the oncoming car driven by Karen.
She called me and I rushed over...about150 yards from our house. There was the flood of "How did this happen?", "I hit my head, am I OK?", "Was it my fault?", "Could I have done something different?" Luckily the airbag did not deploy. I have been in an accident when the airbag did deploy and I am not sure if I would not have been better off just hitting my head into the windshield. I have also be in a car accident where I was thrown from the car and woke up in the ambulance. Yet, I still live. Or is it better to say, "Alas, I still live."? I don't know.
Needless to say, she was traumatized, and I told her as soon as she could give her statement to the police, I would take her home and I would take care of everything. While I was waiting for the tow truck I called the insurance company and started a claim on the insurance. This is an interesting situation because the owners of the car, my mother-in-law and father-in-law have passed away and the car is technically owned by their estate. The adjuster from the insurance company said there might be a few extra hoops we have to jump through but that this happens all the time. She also said that she might have to reassign the claim to someone else who handles this kind of situation. She called back the next day and left a message saying she was going to stay assigned to the claim.
A short time later on the same day, a man called and said he was the new adjuster assigned to the claim, and that it had been determined that the car was totaled. He asked if we could get on a three-way call with the collision repair shop that had the car and I said, yes.
When the three of us were connected the adjuster told the collision repair technician that the insurance company had determined the car to be a total loss. The technician responded, "I agree, but how do you know that? No one from the insurance company has yet come to look at the car."
I had taken a picture of the crash scene and submitted it to the insurance company when I initiated the claim. The insurance adjuster said they had their AI tool look at the picture and it had made the determination that the car was a total loss. No robot had looked under the car, which may show the damage to the engine, or opened the passenger door, which does indicate and bent frame. But from a good photograph the visually trained AI took the year, make, model, trim and mileage into consideration and said, "Nope. This car is a goner."
This year, make, model, trim and mileage is going for $20K. We'll see if they are will to give us that.
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