Personal Injury Cases – Law Offices of Mark E. Salomone & Morelli

Car insurance is supposed to provide you with coverage if you have an accident. In the event that a crash causes injury, a personal injury attorney can assist in pursuing a damage claim and recovering money for medical bills and other losses from the person responsible for causing the wreck.

Insurance is also supposed to provide the money to repair or to replace your vehicle if it is damaged or destroyed in a collision.

However, in some situations, the insurance company will declare your car is not able to be repaired. This is called declaring the vehicle a total loss. In other words, the vehicle is “totaled.”

When your car is declared a total loss, the insurer will pay the replacement value of the vehicle. This may not always be enough to get a car similar to what you had, and it may be difficult for you to actually find a vehicle  you can buy that is affordable for what the insurance company pays out to you.

When is a Vehicle Declared a Total Loss?

The insurance company gets to make the decision about whether a vehicle is declared a total loss. The insured does not get to make this decision and your insurance company may declare your car to be a total loss even if you would prefer the vehicle was repaired.

According to Claims Journal, an insurance company will declare that a car should be considered a total loss if it would cost more money to repair the vehicle than the car is actually worth. In some cases, this can happen with damage that seems minor to the naked eye. If the frame is bent or there are hidden defects caused by the crash, then the insurance company may declare it a loss.

If you have a less expensive or older car, the insurer may also decide it is not worth fixing the vehicle if it is not practical to spend that much money on a lower value car. For example, if a car is worth only $4,000 and the cost to repair the vehicle is totaled at around $3,000, the insurer may decide it is not worth repairing the car because the repairs would be equal to 75 percent of the total value.

The problem is when an older vehicle is declared a total loss, you may not actually be able to find a similar car in a similar condition for the $4,000 or whatever specific low amount of money is being offered. This is also an issue with brand new or newer vehicles, because they depreciate in value so quickly. Because of this problem, some insurance companies offer special policy options where those who total a new car are able to replace it with another new car.

Although you don’t get to decide whether your insurance company totals your vehicle or not, you may have the option to try to argue for a higher payout than the insurer initially offers you. You can consider asking for more if you have clear evidence that the insurer is not providing what your car is actually worth. Contact an experienced crash lawyer for help.

Contact a Hartford accident attorney today at the Law Offices of Mark E. Salomone & Morelli. Calling 1-800-WIN-WIN-1 for your free case consultation or visit http://www.salomoneandmorelli.com.  Also serving New Britain and Norwich to Manchester, New Haven and the Waterbury-area.

Tragedy struck recently in Danbury, a small town just 40 minutes outside of Hartford. There, officials say a three-vehicle crash on Route 53 resulted in three deaths.

Authorities say the 45-year-old driver of a Honda Accord lost control of his vehicle, crossed the center line, crashed head-on into a Buick Lucerne, which was then pushed into a box truck.

The two people in the Buick, both in their late-70s, were taken to the hospital where they later died. Also pronounced dead was the driver of the Accord.

The crash remains under investigation. The Hartford personal injury lawyers at the Law Offices of Mark E. Salomone & Morelli note drivers must always be held accountable for causing serious or fatal traffic collisions, even as technology continues to be deployed in an effort to reduce the risks. In particular, vehicle-to-vehicle communication devices are nearing the marketplace.

The hope is that such devices will be able to successfully intervene in future would-be crashes. Today, that future looks closer than ever.

News of this crash happened just days before the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced that it will begin taking steps to enable vehicle-to-vehicle communication (V2V) for light vehicles. This technology would allow vehicles to “talk” to one another in exchanging basic safety data, such as position and speed. These transmissions can be exchanged up to 10 times every second.

There is no personal information or tracking details exchanged in the transmissions. Nor is there any identification of one vehicle to another. Rather, the communications relate to basic safety information.

Lauded by safety advocates, V2V basically works like this:

Normally, a driver’s only means of avoiding a possible wreck is to see the danger and quickly react with evasive action to avoid it.

With cars that have V2V radio devices, the car itself would sense the danger. The application of brakes in one car would send an electronic signal to other cars nearby, and those vehicles would then react immediately and automatically.

Additionally, vehicles could engage in something like “group discussions.” Facts about traffic conditions, direction and speed could be sent rapid-fire to other surrounding cars.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx was recently quoted as saying that this technology could potentially prevent as much as 80 percent of the traffic deaths that occur each year. In the U.S., we lose more than 32,000 people in motor vehicle crashes each year. Every 16 minutes in this country, somebody dies in a traffic crash.

In Connecticut, we’re talking 220 to 320 people annually (the number who died in 2011 and 2010, respectively).

This devices would also potentially prevent a huge number of serious injuries. The NHTSA reports that more than 5.3 million crashes are reported to police every year in the U.S. Of those, approximately 3.8 million involved major property damage and more than 2.2 million resulted in some type of injury.

Automakers have been developing V2V technology for years. The NHTSA is wrapping up on a year-long pilot program in Michigan. Agency officials say once that period is over, it will complete a research report that will estimate the cost, privacy, security and technical feasibility of a formal requirement. Then the agency will open the issue for public discussion before making an actual proposal.

Technology of course wouldn’t prevent people from engaging in distractions behind the wheel or driving while drunk or too tired. However, if they could instantaneously alert to the danger – and further initiate an immediate mechanical reaction to that danger – we may all be safer for it.

Contact the Hartford Law Offices of Mark E. Salomone & Morelli by calling 1-800-WIN-WIN-1 or visiting www.salomoneandmorelli.com.