Auto Insurance Claims: Insurance company holds at 95% liability, rear quarter panel, insurance comapny

Question
Mr. Hixenbaugh,

My 17year old son was involved in an accident while driving my car. The other driver made a left turn crossing in front of my son's car. My son applied the brakes and swerved to try to avoid contact, but the right front of his car struck the right rear quarter panel of the other car. There is damage to both cars. The other driver admitted fault stating that she thought she could make the turn. We filed a claim against her insurance company. Her insurance originally would only accept 70% fault and tried to assign 30% fault to my son. The reason for their decision was that the other driver was almost through the turn since the contact was to the back portion of the right side of her car. I pushed back stating that speed was not a factor, my son took action to avoid the accident, and the other party admitted that she should have waited before taking the turn. Her insurance came back with 90% liability. I continued to push back and they went to accepting 95% liability but will not budge from there. Why won't the company accept 100% liability since all facts support that the other driver did not take due care to make the left turn? Should I accept 5% liability or continue to push back? This accident occurred in Massachusetts if the state laws are a factor.
Thank you for you help.

Answer
HI David,

This is a tactic used by many insurance conpanies. Its only purpose is to save the insurance comapny money. If they only accept 95% liability, they will save 5% of the cost of the repairs to your car. They will also expect you to pay 5% of the damage to the other car. This may seem like a small amount of money but if they do this as a business practice 50,000 times a year, it adds up to a large amount of money.

You can either accept the 95/5 liability or you can put the claim through your own collision coverage and let your insurance company fight with them over the liability. The other insurance company is hoping that you will find the mony involved to be too insignificant to be worth fighting over and certainly not enough to go to court over.

I hope this helps
Richard Hixenbaugh