Using a personal injury calculator helps you work out how much your auto accident claims are really worth. Here are the top 5 questions people ask about assessing the exact value of their car insurance settlement.
1. So How Exactly Does the Personal Injury Calculator Work out my Auto Accident Claim?
The standard formula that is well known to be administered for auto accident injury claims is:
Pain Multiplier X Medical Charges + Loss of Wages
The “pain multiplier” is a number normally between 1.5 and 5. This multiplier number is chosen depending on the degree of your auto accident injuries; the more significant your injuries, the larger the multiplier.
For example, a minor injury such as a sprained neck is more inclined to get a low multiplier (1.5-3). While a far more significant and debilitating injury, such as a broken leg, would get a greater multiplier (3-5). The multiplier range might even go to larger figures (10) for much more serious and long term injuries.
The next element which is used in the claims formula is your medical bills, often called “special damages.” These bills include the price of your medical treatments, visits to the hospital, ambulance ride, X-Rays, pain medicine etc.
The last thing that is applied in your insurance settlement is your loss of income. This refers to the amount of wages you lost as a result of your personal injuries. For example, if your injuries forced you to stay at home from work, then your lost wages would equal your daily pay rate times the number of work days you had missed.
2. How Soon Should You Begin Using a Personal Injury Calculator?
The most important time to use the personal injury calculator is towards the end of your medical treatment. Always have your injuries accurately diagnosed and reviewed before filing an injury claim. This provides you a more precise estimate of your total medical bills that ought to be provided in your final settlement.
3. Who Should Avoid Using the Personal Injury Calculator?
Many personal injury claims involve minor injuries that will not require you to instantly hire a really expensive lawyer. For these sorts of claims, you may use the injury calculator to get a rough estimate of what your car accident settlement might be worth.
But the truth is, there are insurance claims which should not be handled without having the help of a skilled injury lawyer. Each of these auto accident claims involve more severe and long-term injuries like irreversible disabilities, lost or severed hands or legs, painful head injuries etc. If you were badly injured, your best course of action is to meet with a lawyer who is knowledgeable about claims similar to your various injuries.
4. How Accurate is the Personal Injury Calculator?
The injury calculator really doesn’t give you the specific final settlement, but a basic estimate of just how much your injuries are worth to the insurance companies.
Some people would argue that the injury calculator is too basic. That it does not address the complexnesses and subtleties of someone’s personal injury claim. Some people are fast to bring up Colossus, an advanced software application used by the insurance companies to analyze insurance claims.
Then again, the greatest advantage of trying the personal injury calculator is not to tell you what will be your exact settlement amount. The most important benefit is to help you understand how your specific settlement amount will be determined. The settlement calculator emphasizes that the range of your final settlement amount will be mainly based on:
*The significance of your personal injuries
*Your overall medical expenses.
*Your lost wages
These are going to be the primary elements in your injury settlement no matter which specific software package you use.
5. Should I Use the Injury Calculator?
You will always have the choice of getting a lawyer further down in the claims process. The best advice is to use the settlement calculator to get a quick evaluation of what your car accident claims can be worth.
Read more ways to increase your car accident claims and personal injury settlements
