Use of Repair Estimate Information to Evaluate Physical Damage Severity in Two-Car Accidents

Car-to-car accidents account for a large proportion of the accident environment and societal cost to repair vehicle crash damage. Automobile insurers pay for most of these repair costs. Insurers, on behalf of their policyholders, have an enormous interest in those factors which affect the cost of repair.

Use of computerized auto collision repair estimating allows insurance companies to capture statistical repair cost and crash part involvement information electronically and relate it to vehicle damage.

Analyses are described for using computerized repair estimate data to describe the two-car accident environment. Analyses include the determination of the most common impact direction configurations and their relative repair costs, the most common market class combinations and their relative repair costs, and the distribution of repair cost expenditures for long wheelbase cars impacting shorter wheelbase cars.