How To Deal With An Insurance Adjuster After A Car Crash
Posted in Car accidents,Personal Injury on February 24, 2020
Nobody wants to get into a car accident. However, traffic crashes are a regular occurrence on Tennessee roadways. According to the Tennessee Department of Transportation, there were 208,614 total traffic crashes reported during the latest year of data available. Out of these incidents, there were 999 fatal crashes, 48,072 injury crashes, and 169,543 property-damage only crashes.
Regardless of the type of crash, those involved will inevitably have to deal with insurance claims adjusters. Understanding how to handle claims adjusters is important and can affect the outcome of your settlement.
What to claims adjusters do?
After a car accident is reported to an insurance carrier, insurance claims adjusters will get involved in the case. Claims adjusters are responsible for inspecting property damage and personal injury claims to determine how much the insurance carrier should pay for the damages. They are essentially the investigators for the insurance carrier. Claims adjusters interview claimants and witnesses, inspect damaged property, analyze police reports, and conduct additional research as necessary.
Insurance claims adjusters are not your friends
It is important to understand the insurance claims adjusters are not your friends. Even though they will conduct their investigation in a completely friendly manner, they are trained investigators with one goal in mind – to lower the amount of money their insurance carrier pays for your settlement.
They will look for inconsistencies in your case, and they may even try to blame the accident partially or entirely on you. This is especially true for insurance claims adjusters employed by the at-fault party’s insurance care. You need to secure a skilled Tennessee car accident attorney who has the resources and experience necessary to take on an aggressive insurance claims adjuster.
Steps to dealing with insurance claims adjusters
- Secure evidence. Insurance claims adjusters will be analyzing every bit of evidence related to your case. That is why it is important that you preserve all evidence while it is still available. Keep any photo or video surveillance you have gathered in a safe place, as well as the names and contact information of any eyewitnesses. Keep a detailed account of the facts of the case so that you do not forget anything about the incident.
- Be mindful of your words. Insurance claims adjusters will use your own words against you. They may even contact you and pretend that they are “in the dark” regarding certain facts relating to your case, and ask you to shed some light on what happened. In reality, the insurance claims adjuster will likely know about every bit of information related to the accident. They will have any statements you gave police and will compare anything you say to them to these past statements. Any inconsistencies could be used against you in the claims process. In these cases, it is okay to tell them you are working with an attorney. Your lawyer will handle all of this communication for you.
- Claims adjusters are trained negotiators. Remember, insurance claims adjusters are working to settle the claim for as little amount of money as possible. They understand the negotiating process, and the first settlement offer that they make will likely be well below what you are entitled to.
- Insurance claims adjusters do not want you to have an attorney. Adjusters may even tell you that your case is not worth enough for you to secure an attorney. The truth is that you have to look out for yourself because the insurance claims adjuster is not going to do so. The best chance you have at securing full compensation for your claim is to secure a Nashville car accident attorney as soon as possible after an accident caused by somebody else’s negligence.