Is it "totaled"? Subaru sacrifices itself to save my almost-SIL.

[Moshe]

3 minutes ago, F14Scott said:

As it turned out, the next morning he actually was in a lot of pain. His neck and back had stiffened up and he showed all the textbook symptoms of whiplash. He'll see a doc before the adjuster is done.

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Sorry to hear that.

[F14Scott]

Hondas and Subarus lack frames. They are unibody construction.
Photos of external body damages can be misleading as to totality of damages. 

Almost all cars that aren't pickup trucks or their SUV twins are unibody, these days. Agree, although my final photo seems to speak for itself: damage all the way to the windshield.

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[Moshe]

On ‎4‎/‎19‎/‎2019 at 12:12 AM, Borg warner said:

I had a 2012 Jeep patriot with the off road package that I bought new and paid cash for it and I had just put larger tires on it after a year and some little old lady pulled right out in front of me from the center lane and I T-bone her car on the passenger side going about 30 mph. My Air bag went off and I was temporarily unconscious and was just coming out of it as the air bag was deflating.

The Patriot has a traverse (sideways) mounted front engine and the engine was knocked off it's mounts and the transmission was jammed in gear. There was no way it could been fixed. Traveler's insurance gave me a good price for it but I really liked that car and it was good on the highway and good enough off road and the 4 cylinder go good mileage.

When I was in the USBP, and single, I lived off of Mines Road.  Mines Road in Laredo is nothing but congestion.  However, the semi's understood that people had to turn down that road to get to their apartment, and would actually stop, and let traffic turn.  This was pretty normal.  The problem happened when I turned, one of those 70's boat cars owned by an illegal alien, thought, doing regular speed in the turn lane was the way to go.  I had a midnight blue Nissan truck at the time.  He hit me full on, at speed, fortunately in my right tire.  I managed to limp it in to the gas station on the corner.  Two USBP guys coming on duty witnessed it, and the only white PD guy in town showed up.  The illegal had no insurance, of course, but I had a rider on my USAA insurance just for that occasion.  The PD guy documented it.  He looked at the damage, and was amazed "I have no idea how you got the vehicle this far, the axel is broken."  So, I had a new axel put in, from an old school repair place.  They guy was a nice guy, but being old school, business was conducted with long conversations, as per tradition for a man of that era.  He was very polite, and did go work to replace the entire axel.  It would just take a good hour of conversation on both occasions.

[SC Tiger]

"Totalled" is a simple math equation.  If the vehicle is within a certain percentage of replacement value (I think 80-ish%) they total it.  If not, they fix it.  Simple.

What sucks out loud is that even if it is fixed, the resale value will plummet if they find any evidence it was ever wrecked (and a discriminating buyer will).

What might save you from a repair is if the repair shop says they can't get it straight.  Problem is if they have a frame straighter, they should be able to get it within specs.

On 4/19/2019 at 12:50 AM, tous said:

Good that your your daughter's beau is well, amigo.

I have no advise to offer other than insurance companies and their behavior are more mysterious than Shirley McCalin's forty-four lives.

I had a Porsche destroyed by an inattentive driver.  Traffic on the interstate slowed and stopped.  This driver didn't slow or stop.

My automobile stopped him.  Yes, you can hit a 911 with a Ford station wagon at 40 MPH and the Porsche guy walks away uninjured.

The guy worked for Allstate, it was clearly his fault (smacked in the rear,) and as I was in the emergency room being evaluated, an Allstate representative showed up pressuring me to accept a ridiculpus settlement.

Every time I called to see what progress was being made on my claim, the guy handling that was on vacation, out of the office, please leave a message.

I eventually had to engage a lawyer and sue their asses and even after the lawyer claimed a third I got enough to pay off the lien and pay for a new Porsche outright.

Yeah, I was in the good hands of Allstate and both of them were in my pocket.

 

Not saying this will happen to you, but keep in mind who the insurance claims adjuster works for and whose interests they represent.

 

Best of luck.

My wife was in a wreck with another Allstate customer.  I was worried but they handled it okay.  It was the other car's fault.  Turned in front of her.

Car was fixed okay but it's hard to say what the wreck did.  It was a Malibu so it was already a POS.

On 4/20/2019 at 10:09 PM, blueiron said:

Hondas and Subarus lack frames. They are unibody construction.

Photos of external body damages can be misleading as to totality of damages. 

So does everything else aside from honest-to-God trucks and truck-based SUVs (Tahoe, Yukon, Expedition I think, maybe the Explorer, and the Trailblazer).  Nothing else has a true frame under it, and most cars haven't since the 60s.  At most they may have a small frame on the front that connects to the unibody.

Unibody can be strong as hell of done right and is great for handling.  But if you wreck it........

[F14Scott]

Update: She was, indeed, totaled. The GEICO offer was about what I expected and very well researched; they listed 12 recent, local comps and averaged their values to get mine.

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[janice6]

This is on topic, but off subject.

I had an accident where my wife and I got T boned in a two year old Pathfinder.  It was struck in the right front wheel, hard.  They had to tear off the passenger's door and cut her out of the airbags, front and sides.

The first responders insisted that my wife get checked out at the hospital.  While she was being checked out, I thought I might as well call my insurance company and report the accident.   Wife only had a slight concussion.

I got the company person on the phone and told him the story.  He asked what the damage was.  (I had done many insurance rebuilds prior) I told him it was totaled.  He said that the circumstances didn't sound like it could be totaled.

While I was talking about this, he excused himself for a minute.  He immediately said, "Well from the sensor data, it appeared that I was right and it was probably totaled.  In the end, it was.

My point here is that I had Bluetooth music on in the car.  I didn't have any subscription service through the car systems other than satellite radio.  However, the insurance company got electronic shock sensor data very soon after the accident.  I found this very curious that back then the vehicle was performing data communications on it's own, with another entity that I was given no information about during the purchase process.

I have been through two new cars since then, and my latest has a startup screen now, that states "some" data will be electronically passed to the manufacturer (or a third party also, I don't remember for sure) and I am asked to approve a full data transfer or a minimal one.  These are the only two choices to me.

I found this quite interesting.  

[Eric]

This car punished the driver for wrecking it. Mopars don’t **** around. 

[racerford]

On ‎4‎/‎22‎/‎2019 at 7:45 AM, SC Tiger said:

"....

So does everything else aside from honest-to-God trucks and truck-based SUVs (Tahoe, Yukon, Expedition I think, maybe the Explorer, and the Trailblazer).  Nothing else has a true frame under it, and most cars haven't since the 60s.  At most they may have a small frame on the front that connects to the unibody.

Unibody can be strong as hell of done right and is great for handling.  But if you wreck it........

Corvettes have a frame. Some high end sports cars have a monocoque chassis. I am not sure the Explorer has a frame. I think they went unibody, although there has been talk of returning to a frame.

[SC Tiger]

1 hour ago, racerford said:

Corvettes have a frame. Some high end sports cars have a monocoque chassis. I am not sure the Explorer has a frame. I think they went unibody, although there has been talk of returning to a frame.

I forgot about the Corvette which does have a true frame.  I would consider the monocoque more of a unibody, though that might not be technically correct.

[UnifiedFieldTheory]

From doing the insurance transcription thing, generally if the air bags have deployed or the vehicle is undriveable from the scene, they'd rather just total it.  In addition, if there were any fluids leaking (radiator, transmission, et al) then it's almost a guaranteed total.

I hope they total it - I would not want to climb back into that vehicle with that level of damage, even after repair.

[Duluth]

They totaled that. I was surprised the airbags didn't deploy.

[Duluth]

I drove it home after the crash. It was close to home.