Insurance at work

- David Pine | NZIJ RISK MANAGEMENT LTD


Our man, a self-employed tradesman, was returning home after a long day and was about to enter a large roundabout near his home. He could see another car coming towards him and a glance told him it was travelling far too fast to negotiate the roundabout.

Sure enough the driver lost control, and his vehicle slowly spun around as it approached our client. The car then smashed into the driver’s side of our man’s van with such force that it knocked him over to the passengers side. Both cars slid sideways until the other side of our man’s van rammed into the Armco barrier and stopped.

The young man driving the other car leapt out and shouted “I wasn’t driving too fast”.

I mean, ‘hullo!’

He appeared to be unscathed. Both drivers were in shock.

Our man would later suffer severe bruising and stiffness in almost all of his joints. Fortunately he is very fit and has an amazingly positive attitude, which helped him recover with the help of some visits to the physiotherapist.

The van was assessed quickly by the insurance company and written off.

The next step was to ascertain the PAV or pre-accident valuation of the vehicle, which the assessor did by seeking two quotes from dealers familiar with the type of vehicle and averaging the two.

The result was almost exactly the amount of cover our client had chosen. He did lose his excess but fortunately the other driver had cover on his car so the excess was retrieved from his insurance company.
Insurance didn’t cover the days off work our client had to take, in order to deal with his pain and sort out matters with the police. Then there was the time involved in sourcing another vehicle, which he has since done.

All in all though, he was pretty pleased with the result. And extraordinarily fortunate that the outcome wasn’t a lot worse.

Just another day in the insurance business. One of the days that reinforces the good that we do.