Protecting Yourself from Your Own Insurance Company

No, the title is not a typo. Seriously. Time and again, we’ve heard stories from people about how their claims are poorly handled by their own insurance companies. Here is a real story that happened recently. A friend of ours came to a stop at an intersection. He started driving forward when the light turned green. Coming from the right, in an attempt to race across the intersection, another car drove right past in front of him. His car caught the rear bumper of the other car and knocked it out of control. Airbags were deployed in both cars. Luckily nobody was hurt. But that also meant the police declined to come to the scene. The drivers exchanged insurance cards and found out both were insured by the same insurance company, one of the most well-known names.

What transpired in the claim processing infuriated our friend. The insurance company wanted him to accept 30% of the fault! The cited reason was that the other driver claimed that the light was yellow for her when she raced into the intersection. In this case, since the insurance company is paying from its left pocket to its right pocket, it had little motivation to get to the bottom of the truth. In these his-words-against-her-words type of claims, it is quite common that the insured finds himself getting little help from his insurance company.

Enter the hero that saved the day for our friend, his dashboard camera. In its clear video footage, it was shown without a shadow of a doubt that his car started moving only after the light turned green, which in turn meant that the light for the other driver must have turned red!