Fender bender totals car

[P F Tinmore]

$300 fender bender plus thousands to replace air bags. The insurance company totals car.

What are they going to do with it?

 

[Auld Phart]

$300 fender bender plus thousands to replace air bags. The insurance company totals car.

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What are they going to do with it?

spare parts

 

[Crepitus]

$300 fender bender plus thousands to replace air bags. The insurance company totals car.

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What are they going to do with it?

Sell it to a used dealer who will pull the airbag out of a junked van and resell it.

 

[Grumpyolman]

$300 fender bender plus thousands to replace air bags. The insurance company totals car.

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What are they going to do with it?

Sell the car with a salvage title.

 

[iku]

Them mini-vans were rolling piles of crap.

 

[Oddball]

Fender benders often totaled a lot of Infiniti models, because of their incomprehensibly impossible to match paint.

 

[petro]

When I had my Jeep, I got rear ended pretty hard, and it caused $5,000 in damages that were repaired.
Surprisingly the airbags didn't deploy.

Our uncle owns a body shop and says he spends most of his time arguing with insurance companies about the true cost of repairs as now a simple bumper has multiple sensors that make it cost thousands.

 

[Bob Blaylock]

$300 fender bender plus thousands to replace air bags. The insurance company totals car.

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What are they going to do with it?

Most people do not understand what it really means for a vehicle to be “totaled”.

It does not mean that the vehicle has been rendered unusable or unroadworthy. It doesn't even necessarily mean that the vehicle is particularly seriously damaged.

What it means is that the cost to properly repair the vehicle, to the condition that it was in before the mishap, is greater than what the vehicle would be worth after those repairs are done. When repairs to a vehicle are covered by insurance, there are standards to which those repairs must be made, that can be very costly to meet. An insurance-covered repair isn't going to involve finding a compatible body panel at a junkyard, and making a crude attempt to paint it a similar color. It's going to involve a new body panel, and careful paint-matching; and a detailed inspection to find any minor damage that might otherwise have never been noticed.

A dent that has no impact whatsoever on the actual drivability or roadworthiness of a vehicle can cost more to properly repair, to insurance standards, than a vehicle is worth. That would be a “totaled” vehicle.


On a related note, I came across a claim that there is a certain model of McLaren that is literally impossible to total. It sounds a bit dubious to me, but the premise is that that McLaren is so valuable, that no matter how badly it is damaged, once repaired, it is still more valuable than any possible cost to repair it.

 

[para bellum]

It's just cheaper and easier to total most vehicles and pay off the policy. They get sold at auction, and then repaired and resold with a branded title.