What you should do immediately following your accident with your totaled car?

When your car is totaled immediately following an accident and by totaled, I mean you’ve been involved in a very substantial wreck and the car is no longer drivable. A tow truck obviously is going to need to come and take it from the scene of the secondary road or the interstate and it is going to take it to the storage facility where the tow truck works out of.

Typically you’re going to find that the charge for that is anywhere between $150 to $250 which is something you can certainly reimburse by the defendant’s insurance company for.

However what the hidden charge is that you’re unaware of is every day that your car is actually there and it’s not drivable and it’s where – at the tow yard essentially, it’s going to be charged anywhere between 30 to 50 bucks for every day that it’s sitting there.

Under South Carolina law, you have an obligation to mitigate your damages. By mitigate, I mean lessen your damages. In other words, you’ve got an obligation to make it so that the car doesn’t sit there for very long.

Typically you’re going to find the car is going to sit there when the defendant’s insurance company is having a hard time coming to the conclusion of who’s at fault for the wreck and accepting liability because it’s only when they accept liability that they will actually go get the car from the tow yard and take it to a salvage yard.

The significance of that is once it’s taken to the salvage yard, you’re no longer going to be charged for the storage fees. So you’ve got two choices immediately following an accident.

You can wait and just kind of take your chances and hope that the defendant’s insurance company picks up the tab for all the storage fees or if you have the means, my suggestion would be for you to go and get your vehicle and have it towed from the tow yard to the salvage yard on your own dime and obviously you can submit that bill to the defendant’s insurance company for payment later on. But it will save you money in the long run because you’re not going to be charged $30 a day.

The only other option I can think of is if you have the means either yourself or through a friend and you’re able to tow the car yourselves, you can actually have the car and bring it to your house and just put it in your yard and wait for the insurance company to come get it and once they accept liability and the claim moves forward, they will come and they will tow the vehicle from your car and take it to the salvage yard at that time.

If you have questions or you’ve been involved in an auto accident. Please pick up the telephone and call The Hartman Law Firm at 843-300-7600.