“We don’t make decisions based on common sense” – USAA Insurance claims representative, total loss department. That was pretty obvious by the time he said it. I told him it was going to be a quote of the day.

In June an old man pulled right in front of us in his pickup, from a cross road on our right, while we were at speed in our pickup on highway 26 in central Washington State. WHAM! My 15 year old daughter was driving on her learner’s permit. She could not have done anything to prevent a hard hit, but I think she saved that old man’s life.

You never really know what you’ll do in a situation like that, but I tell myself not to swerve for deer or anything else unless there is a real need to. Hit the damn deer and stay on the road, or hit that car in front of you and avoid a head-on, if it’s a choice between the two. I’ve seen it go very badly when people swerve. She swerved. If she hadn’t, if she’d gone in a straight line, that old man would have been squashed like a melon, I think. As it was we hit corner to corner instead of hitting him in his driver’s door.

I was telling the claims rep that since I had the trans rebuilt and replaced the engine, the hubs, the breaks, etc., that 309K odo reading meant very little, that the newer and shinier pickup I replaced it with actually has “Less useful life left in it, it cost me more than twice what I’m being offered for the totaled truck, and that I shouldn’t have to remind anyone that the injured party (I) should be made whole, within reason, to the fullest extend possible, and we’re not even talking about our ruined vacation.”
“Where did you get that verbiage?” He asked in reply.
“What do you mean?”
“Where did you get that verbiage?” He repeated. Well how do you answer that question? He seems to think that I’m reading from some book, or repeating someone else’s words, which I wasn’t. So rather than argue about that;
“It’s common sense” I told him. That’s when he came out with the money quote.

Yeah, so I’m out thousands of dollars after I take their settlement. Insurance markets, and the whole set of industries surrounding them, like the towing business and the body repair business, medical care, et al, are completely distorted. In a proper world it would be between me and the offending party, and if things fell apart there it would be in the courts, and the insurance company’s role would be to write a check afterwards (or up to the value of the policy). But this is the messed up world of scammers, politicians (but I repeat myself) and Progressives (and again I repeat myself) and so the party writing the check is the same one determining the value of the loss.

I guess that what we were supposed to do, rather than tell the EMTs at the scene that we were all OK and happy to be alive, if a little bruised, and go against their advice to take a ride in and get checked out by doctors, was instead to complain about pain, act all messed up an carry on and so forth, get some prescriptions and braces and all that, like most people, and scam the insurance company for all that pain and suffereing, woe-is-me-I-have-to-take-three-weeks-off-work-and-I-might-have-to-file-for-disability crap. But we didn’t, and won’t.