Personal Injury Calculator: Determining the Value of Your Injury Settlement...

A good automatic personal injury calculator doesn't exist. Too many variables must be considered and personal injury settlement averages vary across states and counties. By now you've got a pretty good understanding of how to make a personal injury insurance claim.

You know what to do and say to make that claim stick in different bodily injury settlement situations. Now we need to figure out exactly how to place a value on your damages. Using a calculator for settlement amounts is tricky because no settlement has an exact or predetermined worth.

In the personal injury insurance claim business, there are too many non-monetary factors that need to be given a cash settlement value. Since no two people will agree on what these cash values are, reaching a final amount isn't a perfect science. Anyone using a computer program to get a settlement amount must give it a considerable margin of error.

A computer program can't feel, and can't put a value on things like:

• inconvenience
• physical and emotional pain
• stress
• loss of enjoyment of life
• inablility to complete responsibilities
• loss of consortium (ability to engage in a spousal relationship)
• inability to do things you enjoy (like play with your child)

Judges and juries are able to consider things like this. They can empathize with a victim, something a personal injury calculator program can't do. Adjusters do have formulas that help them (many even use an injury calculator personal settlement program known as Colossus).

If you can understand these formulas, you'll be better prepared going into your insurance settlement negotiations. You don't have to be in the insurance business to know how these formulas work, and you don't have to be a lawyer to use them.

The truth is, anyone can follow a few basic concepts and arrive at an injury settlement figure on their own. All that's needed is the total of the special damages (documented costs) and a dollar value for pain and suffering.

Granted, the more experience you have, the easier it'll be knowing the range of these figures. This is where a consultation with an attorney becomes so valuable. They have the experience of hundreds, sometimes even thousands of injury cases to draw from.

However, for the kind of insurance claim you're most likely to deal with, the amounts won't be high enough for the lack of experience to matter. But, as noted in the first section, if your case involves very high damages it's best to talk to a lawyer before approaching an insurance company.

When trying to come up with a settlement figure, there's one important thing to keep in mind overall...

What are the liable parties' actual responsibilities?

First, any money lost in relation to your injury must be repaid. This includes bills you or your insurance company paid and wages you lost. Then the liable party must pay for pain and suffering. This includes pain and suffering you've already experienced and may experience in the future, especially if your injury is long-term or permanent.

The liable party is also responsible for emotional damages and missed experiences, whether educational, social or family related.

In the next few sections we'll look at how this is all put together in the damages formula, it's the closest thing you'll get to a personal injury calculator that uses a human's reasoning ability. Your final numbers won't necessarily be the amount you receive, but it's a beginning point for starting insurance settlement negotiations.