If you get rear-ended, the liability is on the other driver, your insurer need not be involved, and will never be the one paying out, barring an underinsured motorist claim. The legal obligation to property is that you are made whole, that you have what you had before the crash (which is a used car). The party at fault/their insurance have to give you the amount of money that it would take to buy a comparable car (year, condition, options). You are legally entitled to the amount of money that will get you back into a practically identical car.

The extra care and maintenance is something that can get factored into condition. If you disagree with a valuation, they typically will entertain an argument for a higher valuation, if it is grounded in reality and especially if you have comparables. They know that it is better to pay more when it is fair, than to get dragged into court, and be told to pay more and told to pay for lawyers, etc.

▲

Marsymars a day ago | parent [-]

> If you get rear-ended, the liability is on the other driver, your insurer need not be involved

Not in jurisdictions with no-fault insurance.

> The extra care and maintenance is something that can get factored into condition. If you disagree with a valuation, they typically will entertain an argument for a higher valuation, if it is grounded in reality and especially if you have comparables. They know that it is better to pay more when it is fair, than to get dragged into court, and be told to pay more and told to pay for lawyers, etc.

Maybe, or they might win in court, and then it's you who should have known it was better to just accept less rather than get dragged into multiple appeals and be told to pay for lawyers etc.

e.g. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/vehicles-insurance-accident...

"The judge awarded him $6,000 in damages but when the insurance company appealed, his award was cut to $1,500 and he was ordered to pay legal costs for the other side. In the end, he was $1,000 in the hole."

▲

dghlsakjg a day ago | parent [-]

None of this is relevant for the scenario you originally proposed and what I was commenting on.

When a car is totaled, there is no argument for diminished value, since you are given the full pre-accident value of the car.

Your points are valid for some cases (albeit so rare that you found an article from over a decade ago about a single case that made the national news, in a province that has since had several major overhauls to their insurance regs.), but have nothing to do with your prior argument or the comments I made.

Leave the goalposts where you originally had them.

	▲	Marsymars a day ago \| parent [-]
		My point with the news article isn’t about the diminished value, it’s just an example of insurance companies willing to spend money on lawyers and appeals to avoid paying out what they don’t want to. I’d expect any insurance company to ballbark the “full pre-accident value” towards the lower end of comparables, and while you might be able to negotiate that up, you’re never going to be able to recoupe everything you’ve spent on a highly-maintained car, because a lot of that simply has minimal effect on the resellable value of the car, or won’t be provable value - e.g. you can spend $1500 on top-end UV-protectant window film, but that’s pretty much never money you’ll get back in a sale or insurance claim.