The Assessor

Our regular column by a motor insurance claims assessor. No matter what he does, he gets stomped on by either his boss or the repairers. These are his stories.

It took just two words inadvertently caught during a private conversation one of our political leaders was involved in recently to whip the media into a lather.

Shit happens!

The gross over-reaction to the use of these two simple words was astounding. Apart from creating a beat-up over a lack of sensitivity displayed by uttering them, some of the media appeared to be ignorant of the fact that this is a commonly used expression. It far more appropriately describes an inexplicable mishap than just simply as bad luck.

They obviously haven’t spent time around the insurance and smash repair industry where I’m certain those two words originated. From workshop incidents to explanations of crashes, I wish I was given a dollar for every time a client or friend has used them. Even the other day I heard them used several times in relation to the Queensland floods, car insurance payouts and the used car market.

Because of the huge number of cars written-off due to the floods, there is now a shortage of used cars on the market to replace them and this is playing havoc with prices. Wholesalers have had to look to interstate for used car stock to sell. Remember, dealers won’t be getting trade-ins to on-sell and yet, are being forced to satisfy demand from “cash and no trade-in” buyers. This classic, low supply and high demand situation will push up the price of used cars, not only in Queensland, but in other states as well.

Added to that, people will discover that an already difficult situation is going to be made worse by the payout figure should their car be insured under a market value policy. Most will find it almost impossible to use that payout to replace their car with an equivalent one due to this upward pressure on prices.

A long-standing mate has been using ‘shit happens’ since his teens to explain some on the road experiences he’s had. In one case, in a literal sense.

Back in the late seventies he would thrash his beloved Datsun 1600 to and from work along the rural roads on NSW’s Central Coast. At dawn one summer morning he’s belted around a bend to be confronted by a sheen on the road surface and several metal buckets strewn around the place. The Datsun has gone into a spin, but being quick of reflex and a good steerer, he’s managed to maintain control .

A putrid, sewer-like smell immediately filled the cabin as, what appeared to be mud sprayed up the sides and onto the windscreen. A toileting accident? Er, not exactly!

At the time, there were still properties in that area with outdoor dunnies which were not connected to the sewerage system. Their buckets of waste were collected by a truck every couple of days which had dropped the buckets only minutes before my mate arrived on the scene.

A few weeks ago he’s called to tell me about another misfortune that he’s prefaced by those two words, this time involving his Porsche. While driving it in heavy traffic he spotted something on the road. Being unable to brake or swerve, he’s run over the object. Within a split second after a horrid noise from under the car, the Porsche’s driver-side door airbag has deployed. With his hands on the wheel, the bag has hit him in the side of the chest, under his armpit. He described the feeling as akin to being kicked by a mule and it left him in a state of shock.

He managed to get the car to a nearby smash repairer to see  whether it was safe to continue driving it. According to my mate, the repairer was totally disinterested in looking at the Porsche and despite obviously being in shock, he was sent packing.

Good one, pal!

The offending object, a 40cm long piece of tubing, had shattered the Porsche’s flat pan undertray. Somehow, the car’s sensors has read it as a side impact and set the door mounted bag off.

Incredibly, he also told me of a pending claim he’d filed against a public utility company. Their sloppy workers left an uncovered 10cm deep trench across a highway which damaged tyres and alloy rims on his wife’s Bimmer. With no warning signs, it was unavoidable.

This stuff is just typical of a lot of my work. All too often, I get to assess damage to cars being driven by people seemingly going about their business in a careful and considerate way. Using those two words explains what happened perfectly.

One of the most memorable involves an elderly gentleman whose car was sliced open laterally on the off-side, from headlight to rear quarter panel by a ‘keep left’ sign. The sign was bent right over into the lane in which he was travelling and it being late at night, he had little chance of seeing it. The old fella was lucky to escape serious injury – shit happens!