Low Speed Collisions Get
NO Respect!
Most modern cars absorb some of the
destructive energy in car crashes, particularly when the collision is at low
speed, which often means that the car is not expensive to repair. Depending on
how the crash occurs, the occupants of the car may escape injury completely,
get some injuries that aren’t that serious or receive injuries that are
lifelong disabilities. To determine the actual extent of injuries – or not –
that result from low speed crashes, car accident experts have analyzed
thousands of pages of scientific and medical literature that serve as reliable
guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of persons injured in low speed
crashes. The problem for claimants is that car accident insurance companies
have decided to ignore the possibility of severe injuries and treat all low
speed impacts as though no serious injuries are possible. This defies logic and
is motivated by a love of profits, rather than good science or solid judgment.
This ugly reality has resulted in the denial of a fair settlement to thousands
of injured people and, finally, to the recognition that a group of car accident
experts need to come together to protect injured people from this abusive
insurance claims strategy. The following is an overview of the car insurance
claims strategy; how it developed and what is required to get a fair settlement
despite this unfair strategy.
Car Accident Insurance Companies decided Profit was
Better, so Just Pretend Injured
People don’t Exist!
It is important for families and health
professionals to know the facts about what games are being played by big
insurance industries. This way proper protection for those who have become
vulnerable after car accident injuries is available. It starts with
understanding how the insurance strategies that place profit ahead of reason
began.
A 1999, the Insurance Research Council
(IRC) conducted a car accident insurance study that reviewed and created a new
analysis of car insurance claims. The results of the study encouraged car
insurance companies to believe that a lot of money could be saved, they started
cutting their own insured’s MedPay/PIP payments, especially those for soft
tissue damage and chiropractic care. They established "new rules"
that need to be clearly understood by anyone wanting fairness in the insurance
claim results of their accident.
Largely due to new laws around air bag
installation, obvious car accident injuries declined, but air bags and other
design features of modern cars caused a rise in soft tissue injuries, which are
less obvious, but sometimes severe. The findings of the IRC study are credited
with the development of a new claims negotiation strategy known as Minor Impact
Soft Tissue segmentation claims or MIST as the industry professionals call it. This
new strategy reduced settlement amounts so much that other insurers raced to
adopt it. It works like this:
When a car accident claim
first comes into an insurance company, if the vehicle damage is below $1,500,
the claim is routed to the MIST (Minor Impact Soft Tissue) division of the
company, on the premise that if less than $1,500 worth of damage was done to
the vehicle, the parties involved could not have incurred substantial physical
injury. The MIST insurance claims division will limit the amount of the claim
adjuster so that he cannot make a fair offer, often not exceeding $3,000.
Before reviewing any medical records or doctors’ notes, they decide that the
injured party has only minor injuries. When the family attorney reasonably
refuses this offer, the insurance company positions itself to go to court in
order to make the claim completely financially unfeasible from a cost
perspective where the family is concerned. This invariably wins a reduced
settlement for the person sustaining car accident injuries and also lowers
reimbursements for the chiropractors who are providing the care. If the
attorney representing the injured party refuses to accept such a low offer, the
insurance company is prepared to spend many times the amount of a reasonable
settlement to take the case to trial. The intended result is to make cases such
as these economically infeasible for lawyers to accept. If the lawyers can’t
make money on a case they won’t accept it-or, if they do, they accept the low
offer and disburse the funds so that the client and patient get paid very
little. If the injured party does not have a lawyer, often they will not
receive a fair settlement-no matter how serious they are injured.
Car
Accident Experts Prove Injuries Do Exist!
Since there are no substantiated minimum
thresholds of injury that can be based on the forces imparted to the vehicle
during car accident injuries the cases are subject to accusations of "junk
science." There are no set norms
established scientifically for these impact situations. This means that
bio-mechanic specialists and engineers are routinely dismissed in court.
What to do? Our car accident experts
take on the MIST strategy, relying on the works of Dr. Michael Freeman, DC, Dr.
Arthur Croft, DC, and other medical and legal experts who have successfully pulled
together the science to refute the junk science claims. See the section on
Biomechanics for a more in-depth look at these experts. Also, our doctors and attorneys
attend continuing educational seminars to prepare to be fully armed for negotiations
with the claims adjuster and, if necessary, the trial testimony. These steps
greatly improve the chances of receiving fair settlement of valid car accident
injuries. Successful settlement or trial strategy is based on a deep
understanding of the right science and the ability to communicate that
understanding to adjusters [if they listen] or juries, if the adjuster refuses
to deal with the real value of serious injuries.
Experts in MIST defense also work for
claims to be bumped out of MIST units, which help get proper evaluations on
record for the claims settlement. This results in higher settlements for the
victims of car accident injuries. Our car accident injury specialists get many
of these cases bumped out of the MIST unit so that they get the proper
evaluation and claims settlement. Any claim that is bumped out of the MIST
system is more likely to settle for a fair amount, because the adjuster is
released from artificial, unrealistic controls and can get authority to settle
the claim fairly.
What
if the Insurance Company refuses to Believe the Truth?
Unfortunately its often necessary to go
to court to get a fair sum for someone’s injuries. Experts who are on top of
claim handling processes often get the claims out of MIST units before it gets
this far, but if your claim is one of the few that goes to court, you want to
know that you have an expert car accident litigator handling your case. To
understand how car accident litigation experts handle trial of injury claims,
see the section on Attorney/Trials.
