parcany wrote:
Ok, My company has picked up wrecks where somebody was killed and they were not at fault, somebody else hit them. Both vehicles were put into storage. When the insurance company gets the report and pics from the police they would send out a investagter and we would have to go out and pick up the wrecked vehicles so they look everything over and we did this many many times. They check everything out even putting all of the vehicles parts on our flatbeds and weighing it. These people would go thru every inch of the vehicles and check everything, shocks, springs, etc etc to see if something went wrong. They also check to make sure that they were legal in every way possible. Now this is the insurance company of the person who hit the other person who died. I can't give out names cause I don't know who they were, all I know is that the insurance company will try everything in there power not to pay damages, especially if they find out that anything is wrong with the other person. My Excursion got hit one time and I never had so much bull--it from the other insurance company trying to tell me that I was in the wrong not their insured. If it is just a fender bender then it would not be a big deal but when somebody gets killed or hurt real bad then it is a different story. Hope this helps.
This helps. Thank you. I will point out that your scenario is completely normal for a fatal accident. The insurance company is looking for comparative fault so that if they can find anything the deceased driver did wrong they can minimize their payout. In other words, if they found the deceased driver contributed to the cause of the accident by being overweight and said this was 10% of the cause of the accident, then this would cut their claim cost by 10%. So if the claim was for $1 million this would save them $100,000. But in no way are they denying coverage to their own party. You'll note they are weighing the other party's vehicle, not their own party's vehicle.
One additional thing I will note is that even if your insurance company covers you for your negligence, you still have a potential for criminal charges to be filed against you. So if you are grossly negligent in being overweight (say towing a 35 foot trailer with a Honda Civic) and you kill someone, you can potentially be charged with negligent homicide, etc. Same as a DUI.
