What happens if you get into an accident with a driver who has Geico and you have Geico? The company doesn't matter, if you both have the same insurer the situation is the same.
The most important thing to do in case of an accident, even minor, is to get a police report. This has saved me a couple of times in a minor accident. The other driver will say there is no reason to get a police report, just trade information. I have always asked for a report and it saved me once they began claiming something other than what happened.
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I don't think you understand- State Farm is the biggest insurer so you are most likely to have a claim with a SF insured.
Police report? Good luck on that. In a lot of areas, you are lucky if a cop will come for a fender bender.
Here is what I mean by comparative negligence.
Two parties have an accident, one is insured by State Farm, the other by my company.
How does it get settled?
I call them or they call me, one of those two happens. SF guy says my guy was 50% at fault, I say SF guy is 70% at fault because he was speeding, SF guy says "Ok, we'll settle for being 65% liable, your guy is 35% liable.
So,we pay SF 35% of their damages, SF pays us 65% of our damages (the same can be applied to how much your ded is).
Very, very rare is where negligence is 100% in your favor. Things that are like that are rear enders and getting t-boned by someone running a red and having the witnesses or cameras to prove it.
With my company being small, I only had one claim where the other party was with us as well. I knew the other adjuster,we were trained together and settled it 50/50, f-it, called it a day.
So, when that adjuster is negotiating, he is representing you.Whether you like it or not, that is their job. When you get served, you turn the papers to the insurance company and some poor shlub like me has to handle the claim and once we respond to the lawyer or insurance company, they don't communicate with you again w/o permission. If one company insures both parties, that is like them being the judge/jury/executioner. Keep in mind that the dweebs in blunder, er underwriting are kept in the look and the % of negligence given to you can affect your rates. While my company told us that 0% would not cause rates to go up, I have no idea if 10%, 20% or 50% would as the company would not tell us, everything related to rates was kept as secret as the location where Jimmy Hoffa was buried!
Things can get sticky with bigger claims. For example, if the person (insured with same company) is underinsured and paralyzes you, you are in the situation of suing your own insurance company.
I heard one VP of a company tell us that they didn't like to keep insuring people who used their uninsured motorist coverage.
I pray no one here gets paralyzed or killed, but $hit happens, people do die. If this happens, your family should hold off on getting an attorney. Yup, you heard me, hold off, especially one on a contingency as they won't be of much use. We were told that in this case, if the limits of our insured were not real high, we were to rush out to the plaintiff, show them the coverage page with the limits and offer them a check for limits right then and there before a shyster lawyer got to them. After limits are paid out, you can still go after the person's assets, but more often than not, it won't be fruitful. We would go back to our insured, say we paid out limits and continue to provide legal help for bankruptcy if needed.
Seeing how the C14 is a high powered 700lb road missile, I hope everyone here has good high limits, you'd be surprised how cheap it is to raise your limits. Bikes can cause a lot of damage and one of my most memorable claims was a Honda Hurricane 1000 that sliced into a Honda CRX. The rider was wearing good gear and flew over the car and survived with a couple of cracked ribs, the woman in the CRX was killed (she was our insured).
If you get in an accident, take pictures, lots of pictures, if there are any witnesses, get their numbers! These things mean a lot more to an adjuster than just a statement from with either party or a generic police report.
