[kipperfan]

I handle injury claims (including MVA injury claims) for a living and have to say there is quite a bit of misinformation in this thread.

Firstly, you definitely want to report to claim to your insurance company, paying out of pocket for physical damages is rarely a good idea as there is nothing stopping the other party from accepting your money and five minutes later calling your insurance company and reporting the accident claiming injury, your insurance company will open a claim without even advising you first.

There does NOT need to be physical damage to a vehicle for someone to make an injury claim (though it does make it more difficult), and despite the cap being in place a person could potentially get tens of thousands of dollars for an injury stemming from an accident with little to no physical damage. If you'd like a good example, a recent claim handled in our office was just settled for $120K for a claimant claiming chronic pain stemming from a low impact rear end accident. There was no physical damage at all to the other persons vehicle and only $630 damage to the claimant vehicle. But she got a good lawyer, went to treatment for 5 years straight and found a few specialists (well, the lawyer did of course) saying her "chronic pain" stemmed from the accident and boom...$120K.

With regards to the cap, it was put in place for one reason and one reason only, motor vehicle insurance rates in Alberta were skyrocketing and at one point the highest in the country because every person who got a basic soft tissue injury (Whiplash, sprains and strains) was being awarded $10-20K minimum for taking 15 treatments over the course of 2-3 months. While there are certain instances that the cap is unfair and claimants actually should receive more then the $4725 (for accidents occurring in 2013) given the severity of the injuries and the impact they have, IMO (and from copious experience) those instances are rare and are far outnumbered by the cases of malingering and outright fraud that occurred under the old system.

And with regards to reporting the accident to the police, a total non factor with regards to a potential injury claim. Soft tissue injuries (and other injuries as well, but mostly STI's) can manifest days or (allegedly) even weeks after the event the caused them, in fact we get claims all the time where 2, 4, 6 even 12 months after the accident someone will call up, say their neck hurts and it "simply must have been that accident I was in 9 months ago!" and we have no choice but to open a claim and have no ability to deny said claim due to the person not reporting the injury right away or not reporting the accident to the police.

And to the poster above saying "waiting never hurts you" and "wait until they open a claim", I would have to strongly disagree. This persons wife might decide today that she is injured and might start treatment, obtain a lawyer, start seeing specialists (all of this is very worst case scenario of course), the lawyer could wait until 2 years from the date of loss before he files his statement of claim. Because a claim was never opened with the insurance company they won't get a copy and the lawyer doesn't need to serve for another year, so potentially if this person is injured the insurance company could learn about the injury as late as 3 years from now. In those three years a good lawyer can basically destroy any chance an insurance company has at effectively defending that claim and could potentially turn a $5k injury into a $100K injury. Again, worst case scenario, but trust me when I say this stuff happens all the time.

And my last point, to the poster saying "not being able to sleep won't go far for a claim", you couldn't be more wrong, the "not sleeping" is a 1000 foot blood red flag that should not be ignored. In fact, maybe she's been through the MVA injury claims process before because given the severity of the loss, that might be one of the better claims to start making. It is pretty easy to get a diagnosis for PTSD in this city and if this women is willing to go through counselling for a few years and claim nightmares and fear of driving she will get one relating it to this accident, and then you're looking at a large claim to say the least.