Accident Impact on Interior of Vehicle

Google is your friend. Search term; "vehicle crash forensics engineering"

http://www.technology-assoc.com

http://forensicdynamics.com/home

http://www.craneengineering.com/accident-reconstruction-vehicle-testing/motor-vehicle-accident-reconstruction.php

http://www.robsonforensic.com/practice-areas/vehicles-roadway-systems-expert

https://www.theexpertinstitute.com/case-studies/forensic-engineer-speaks-to-vehicle-speed-after-dui-accident/

No advice from an internet forum will make one iota of difference to an insurance company.

Seek professional help that they cannot refute or ignore.

No.

No one can help you.

The insurance company has all manner of crash data and you don't. They have lawyers on salary that will defend their position and trash you and you "data".

Depending on the year of your vehicle it will have an accelerometer built into the vehicle,and you may be able to extract the data from it.

Otherwise, your story will be shot so full of holes that it will sink before your eyes.

It sounds unlikely to me anyway.

An 80,000# truck traveling at 70MPH is a lot of energy. An 11,000# truck will probably be totally demolished.

Just be thankful you are alive.

Maybe you can attempt a claim with your own insurance company, and let their high-powered lawyers duke it out with the other insurance company's lawyers.

Something sounds fishy here: How can something that did happen be said it can't happen? Has anybody yet computed the acceleration involved?

No one computed anything. Our insurance company said we had to go through the other drivers insurance, they are refusing to cover anything. Luckily the operators were outside the truck working and were able to run three feet away from the truck on impact. This whole thing has turned into a nightmare.

Your insurance guy doesn't want to get involved? That sounds like a bunch of baloney to me. You can ask around, I know my baloney.

Subrogation

As lyn said, I'm also surprised your tow vehicle wasn't blasted apart. Good to hear there are no injuries.

Even if your insurance company won't cover any of the financials, have you asked them if they will help you with the other insurance company?

I thought what would happen is the insurance would pay, then go after the other person and insurance company in the courts, if they couldn't settle.

There seems to be things still missing here. Like to know what the police report said.

You may need to talk with your state insurance commissioner.

Accidents involving a CDL/ICC vehicle are an insurance nightmare since they don't follow the same set of rules that passenger vehicle insurers are familiar with, your insurance carrier's reaction speaks to that. You're only recourse is to hire a law firm that specializes in commercial vehicle accidents and let them do all the work, otherwise you will be playing in their sandbox and their bullies (lawyers) will thwart you at every step. Expect it to take years to litigate regardless of the circumstances or who's at fault.

That's why we have lawyers....go get one....a good one...

Long shot but do the TV stations in your area have segments in the evening news where they do stories of companies ripping off people? If the police report says the tow truck was hit then the TV reporters might take the story. Nothing like a little bad press to get an insurance company to double check the facts.

what did the police report say?

did anyone get a ticket or citation from this accident?

Was your hazard strobe on and working?

Did you place hazard triangles on the road extending some hundreds of yards rearward?

Were you just over the crest of a hill, or just around a curve, where the trucker's visibility was limited?

Did the highway have a left shoulder, so that you could avoid stopping in the left lane?

Etc.

Get your act together, or be prepared to kiss your truck goodbye.

All lights were on. We were on the shoulder just barely over the fog line. The stretch of freeway is a straight stretch for 30 miles all the other drivers said they saw our lights four miles before they ever got to us. Driver of the semi said he didn't see our wrecker. He took his load and disappeared the next day even his own insurance company has not been able to contact him.

Okay. I was somewhat prepping you for the sort of questions you might get if you can make this go to litigation, and your explanation sounds pretty decent.

The semi driver's behavior sounds wrong, and possibly his company and their insurance provider, too. Their story about how your damages couldn't happen was a crock.

However, you haven't yet provided any police accident report info that might be available.

I would consider consulting with a contingency-fee lawyer on a case like this, with punitive damages possibly in view. If you have described this correctly, it is almost hit-and-run. On the other hand, if you have hidden or fudged anything, then less power to you.

The semi was also totaled in the accident. All vehicles had to be towed. The Semi driver came the next day to pick up the trailer and then left. The State Patrol report only shows him at fault does not say if he was cited or not. Sadly the driver is an owner / operator of his own company out of California. His insurance provider has at least been more informative then our insurance. He is the one that told me our insurance since they did not pay full value of our truck should never have taken our truck and sold it since they didn't legally own it and then kept the salvage money instead of giving it to us. So now that amount will also be deducted from what the other insurance company will pay out. I have tied 26 lawyers no one will touch it since no serious injuries. And yes I have filed a complaint with the insurance commissioner of Washington.

WOW! When 26 lawyers won't touch you unless someone was hurt now that's a blacklisted profession!

Disease-riddled Hookers and drug lords that use babies and cute furry animals for mules get better legal treatment than you.

Well, at least now I know that if I go on a killing spree if I keep it to just tow truck owner operators the courts will probably toss the case out due to my not having killed anyone who gainfully matters enough in society get a lawyer to take their money to defend them and they will take on defending dirty penniless homeless street bums murder cases.

"Mr Tcmtech, you have been brought before this court in regards to your blatant outright cold-blooded murder of Mr. John Crook that was witnessed by over 250 school aged children who oddly enough had cell phones that day and every single one of them recorded your actions in their entirety . How do you plead?"

Not guitlty your Honor. Mr. John Crook was a licensed tow truck owner operator, your honor.

"Oh. I see! Well then, no harm no foul. Case dismissed. BTW Mr. Tech would you mind stopping by my office in a few minutes? My Mercedes got towed for no reason a few days ago. I have a job for you if you don't mind. Nothing illegal of course!"

I had a strange art theft incident some years ago, but couldn't get any lawyers, nor the San Francisco PD, interested in sorting it out, even though there was some pretty cut-and-dried documentation on it. At least two ridiculously incompetent judges were involved.

I'm going to take a wild guess here from personal experiences and say that I have suspicions that the Insurance Company has a beef with tow trucks in general.

I mean you guys do charge a huge amount for doing very little work and almost all of it could be seen as taking advantage of a person when you're doing it.

$100 - $200+ an hour for picking up a stalled vehicle. A few hundred more to get your vehicle back if it got towed or impounded even by mistake. Or if it's a big rig multiply those numbers by 5.

There are laws in many places that make doing a good samaritan job to help out a stranger for free illegal as well of which I seriously doubt the general public pushed those sort of laws through on their own.

Maybe you're not a bad one but your profession sure has a lot of bad ones in it and we all know they are who tests the lower standards in how all of us deal with things.

BTW if that big rig that hit you had a dash cam, as almost all do now, and his recording of what happened shows any single legal violation of the laws, to be honest, your probably screwed or at least going to be out a whole lot of cash proving yourself otherwise.

If your one of the good guys then I feel bad for you but if you're like the ones who give tow truck drivers a bad name ,well heck. you'll have a brand new $200K+ tow rig bought and paid for by the end of this year anyways. Probably by thanksgiving even.

All has to do with market, when your stuck, very little alternative, if you don't have a truck and a friend who is handy to help a trailer.

You may have a $50,000.00 tow truck where for work when it rains, it pours for work. And then go for weeks without a call.

As far as it getting impounded, that is the tow truck drivers fault. Who ordered to have it impounded.

It is when he grabs the wrong vehicle. Been there done that still had to pay but he was nice about it and only stuck me for $100 cash for his time wasted on his mistake.

As far as $50K goes on a tow truck that barely pays for a basic lift system on the back.

I try to give all tow truck owners the benefit of the doubt and assume they are good people but to be honest I have yet to ever meet one who measured up to my assumptions.

The last one I dealt with had his truck break down on our property blocking the only road in and out, so he couldn't even get one of his other smaller tow trucks in to tow his own, and figured that it would be reasonable to charge me $200 an hour to have his truck sit blocking my driveway until he could get a bigger truck (that was out of town) out the next day that could pick his truck up backwards and haul it.

It was either that, use the payloader he just pulled out of the ditch to pull his truck out of the way or lawyer up and see who has more time and money to spend on proving they are right which I didn't have a chance in hell of winning being that in the contract he has people sign when he first shows up it say that as the person who hired him I take full responsibility o for an and all damage that happens to his equipment while on my job.

I had rented a payloader and got stuck in the ditch in a way that our own equipment was too small to be able to pull out so I was stuck with having to hire the guy knowing full well he is a crook. While pulling the payloader out his truck blew out an airbag that some how wiped out all the other air lines locking his brakes on so he couldn't even move himself off the road when he was done.

Well, this explains #13.

I figured it was something like that.

Actually, that was the LAST experience with crooked tow truck operators, not the first.

I just put a number out there on a tow truck, after I posted, I just left it, it's atleast twice that.

Getting the wrong vehicle impound... To Operate a tow truck guess now minimum standards are really set. And if you on a job, working or not whether it's the fault of the tow truck,I guess they expect to get paid.

They must rate just under a meteorologist.

I have to head out to the gym... I'm late already... Then Have to finish cleaning my garage, so I can start my next project.

Phoenix you are way low on cost as a (Friend) that I deal with every now and again just bought a new flat bed. We were talking about cost of doing business when he threw out what it cost him for his new wrecker flat bed Freight liner and not a semi sized wrecker just for light trucks and autos. $278,000 it came with everything imaginable including a 1/2 million warranty that he knows he wont reach because of cost averaging for IRS taxes to be written off in 5 years then on to the next truck. He also owns a Ford 450 flat bed mostly for auto extraction and tow ins and repo's that he had mechanical issues with that would have scared me to pay his repair bill. His turbo started leaking oil, The turbo cartridge was not available for this particular truck but you could buy a new unit for $5600.00 plus exchange of the old unit. Or wait for two weeks for them to rebuild the old one and be out of work that long, then pay to have it installed which meant pulling the entire cab off the chassis. Another $1700.00 labor for removal of the cab and installing of said unit. We did it in about 11 hours without removing the cab and I wont be in any hurry to try that again any way soon. So yes it is an expensive endeavor to be a wrecker driver and there are some really bad ones just not all of them. I have met both types and treat them accordingly.

So what does your buddy do with the old truck when he gets a new one ever 5 years?

Just asking being in my life I have seen almost everything at an auction at some time yet I have never seen a modern factory set up tow truck that came from a private owner. (government fleet only and they are few and far between)

I mean I know where the local tow truck owners live and I know that every one of them has ever single truck they have ever bought parked out back when a newer one took its place which means that these guys have several million worth of perfectly good fixable trucks (And that's just the guy who has been in business for the last 15 or so years) just sitting there so that no one else can get into the business and give them competition.

Most of the time he trades them in or sells them outright to his kids for their own businesses in other states that way they aren't in his neighborhood competing with him. You are correct very few ever hit the open market. Most will keep them on the road until their is nothing worth repairing. Or they wont pass inspection by the state.

Like LOCKDUKE said, the IRS won't let them sell them if they depreciated them out and took the tax break.

My Texas farmer uncle had every tractor/combine etc. he ever bought parked on his property.

He farmed 6 sections of land and had a tax man.

If you depreciate them out.... And then sold them, that would be capital gains would it not?

Not sure what the reason was, I just know they were parked.

I was too young to ask about the tax laws, I just thought it was a waste.

I recall, when I was 18-19, on the farm. Are depreciation what running out, and a lot of equipment and our accountant at the time mentioned, that we were going to have issues when it did happen.

Our equipment was old, but well maintained, dad wasn't the one to replace equipment the was running... He was more of a type that replaced it, when the work to keep it running was no longer paid.... Some times he waited too long.

Unfortunately we had a barn fire, and by rebuilding the problem of depreciation was addressed, but created created another problem with herd health management.

Ouch.... Ok already, I came up short....... Lol...

1/4 mil huh?....

http://www.caranddriver.com/features/challenger-rotator-9909

I think a lot has to do with the tow truck shows, where they bring their tow trucks in for competition, the winner has bragging rights.... And Tmctech pays for it.

tcmtech has nothing on this one.... $49,000.00 for a tow.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/10/28/tow-company-chargesn-massachusetts-man-nearly-49k-pull-jeep-mud-pit/74730356/

WOW is all I can say that is NUTS. Worst off road bill we ever saw was $4500.00.Three miles off main road in a snow and sleet storm and had been raining for two weeks before, so the ground was soaked and soft. A young girl did not know where the road was like the locals and tried to cross lot a corner just out of reach of our cables and chains. Almost 100 ft., sunk to the rockers and then some. One thing I will give her credit she tried to get it out until it run out of gas, or it probably would have been near China before we got there. Had to dig under the front wheels and lay ramps for it to roll on then drive post in the ground for anchor points then used the detachable winch attached to a large tree ran power cables from our bed batteries to the winch and started pulling. It took us almost 9 hours to get her out without damage except where she threw rocks up on the paint. Boy was her father mad, not because of the tow bill, but where she was she wasn't suppose to be that got her caught and him upset. I guess she was not allowed to skip school for an afternoon rondavue with her coach Wow was he mad I don't think he stopped yelling from the time he got there till the time he left with her and the Grand Cherokee covered in mud. Luckily we carried a 5 gal can of gas just in case of situations as that.

No we are not one of the bad ones. During the winter we patrol the highway and just pull people out that are stuck for nothing. We also tow for military and veterans for free. It's free towing for you and your vehicle on new years so we don't have to respond to a fatality. We are just a small company trying to stay in business. And no we can not afford to buy a new truck.

Please tell me you leave the idiots in the ditch!

You know the ones that come flying past me on slushy/snowy/icy roads at 70 mph that end up spun out but ok in the median a mile down the road and stand there looking at me for help to get out of the predicament they got themselves into?

I just smile and wave and think that is EXACTLY where they need to be.

Yes i know its bad karma but at least they cant get into more trouble there.

That's what the legal profession is for. It is their job to make money out of other people's misery. Yellow Pages?