Complaint Review: State Farm Insurance

According to crash report, at 10:08 pm witnesses called in an accident in progress: an oncoming vehicle lost control, crossed opposing traffic and flipped his vehicle. At the same time, my daughter encountered a puff of heavy smoke and collided with the other driver's debris-field in her lane. She pulled over the side of the road and called us (her parents and owners of the vehicle she was driving) at 10:09 pm (we have a text message with this time on it). We arrived before the police showed up.

When the tow-truck driver arrived, he stated that the motor in our van was pushed back and he would consider it a total. When we called State Farm, they said the accident was our daughter's fault because she didn't avoid hitting the debris. They said liability is determined by degree of negligence. Evidently, crossing lanes of opposing traffic and leaving debris all over the road, ditch and field isn't sufficient. Nor is a heavy cloud of smoke or the mere seconds between the flipping car and oncoming traffic. By that reasoning, her only negligence was not possessing DNA to grow wings and fly to avoid the accident.

Our daughter was not cited because even the officer did not consider her at fault. As a result of this accident, we lost a vehicle (with no recompense) and had to salvage the vehicle for towing and lot charges. This is wrong.

We wrote a Senator and he forwarded our complaint to the Ohio Department of Insurance. They, in turn, wrote State Farm to resolve the matter. Of course State Farm continued to deny liability. I wrote our State Senator and he too, wrote State Farm. No one does anything. They just write letters, as though State Farm has any incentive to pay. 

They have an invested interest, but it is in declining this claim. They have financial motive to refuse. I cannot get an unbiased and fair result if State Farm is not held accountable by another agency. I am not surprised they continue to deny liability since they know they can get away with it.

This type of self-governance does not work. Corporate greed is what led us to widespread fraud in Wall Street and the Banking collapse. It is what has led to class-action lawsuits against health insurance companies like Blue Cross and Blue Shield. It is responsible for some of the worst American atrocities against employees, clients and stockholders by large corporations like Enron and AIG. Large corporations are notorious for bullying and selling out everyone and everything except their own Board of Directors and CEOs. To expect them to behave in our best interests is ludicrous. They must be held accountable to more than a few impotent letters from equally impotent State departments and representatives.