What Diminished Value Means In A Car Accident

When you encounter a collision while driving your car and end up with major damage to your vehicle, you could go after the responsible party's insurance company for the damages. If you are injured in the accident, this person's insurance company will also be responsible to pay for your medical bills and other things. One thing you might want to make sure you also ask for is compensation for the diminished value for your vehicle. If you have never heard of this, here are several things you should know.

What diminished value represents 

Diminished value is a term that is used only after a car is involved in an accident and is then repaired. Once the repairs are complete, this car will never be worth as much money as it was before the accident, even if the repairs completely fix all the problems that were caused by the accident. The loss in value occurs automatically, simply because the car was wrecked. Therefore, if you get into an accident, you should ask for compensation to cover the diminished value of the car.

Why this happens

The reason a car is never worth as much after an accident as it was before is due to several things. First, people do not typically want to buy wrecked cars. Anyone that is shopping for a car has the right to look up the history on the car. When people find out a car was wrecked, they may walk away from that car and choose a different one to buy. They may, however, buy that car if the price is low enough to compensate for the diminished value.

The second reason for this is due to the inherent problems a car may have after a wreck. Cars that suffer from extreme damage are often never the same after an accident, even when repairs are completed. Wrecked cars could have a number of different issues from a wreck, but you might not know what these are for several months or even years after the accident took place. In either case, a wrecked car is worth less money than a car that was never involved in a wreck.

Diminished value is just one thing you can fight for after a car accident takes place, but there are a lot of other forms of compensation too. To learn more about the types of compensation you can get, contact a car accident lawyer today.

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