When Both Drivers Blame Each Other in a Wreck
If you were a passenger and the insurers are pointing fingers, here's why a disputed-liability claim can still pay.
You were riding in someone else’s car when the wreck happened. Now the driver you rode with says the other driver caused it, the other driver says the opposite, and both insurance companies are using that disagreement as a reason to do nothing. On top of that, maybe you walked away without broken bones — your injuries were more emotional than physical — and the firms you called told you they weren’t interested.
That is a frustrating place to sit. It is also not the dead end insurers want you to believe it is.
Being a Passenger Changes the Math
When two drivers blame each other, each insurance company has an incentive to dig in. Every dollar one of them pays is a dollar the other one saves. So they stall, they point across the road, and they hope you get tired.
But as a passenger, you were not steering. You were not braking. You did not choose the following distance or the moment to pull into the intersection. The dispute between those two drivers is a dispute about which of them is responsible — not about whether you were. That distinction matters enormously, and it is the reason a passenger claim that looks stuck often isn’t.
Don’t Pick a Side Too Early
The instinct is to figure out who was at fault and then chase that one policy. That instinct costs people money.
If the fault picture is genuinely contested, the better approach is to put a demand in front of both carriers — the one covering the other vehicle and the one covering the driver you were riding with. Let each of them evaluate their own exposure. An adjuster who has spent months insisting “we’re not paying” while assuming the other side would absorb the loss often reads the situation very differently once they realize a claim has been made against them directly and the finger-pointing no longer protects them.
Making a demand on the driver who was giving you a ride can feel uncomfortable, especially if that person is a friend or family member. Understand what you are actually doing: you are making a claim against an insurance policy that exists precisely for this situation. That is what the premiums bought.
Injuries You Can’t See on an X-Ray Still Count
A lot of people assume a claim only has value if there is a fracture, a surgery, or a long course of physical therapy. That belief is why some firms turn cases away and why adjusters feel comfortable dismissing them.
Psychological harm from a collision is real harm. A panic attack severe enough to send you to the emergency room is a documented medical event with records behind it. If you have been in a wreck before, a new collision can trigger a response that someone without that history would never experience — and the fact that you were more vulnerable is not a defense for the person who hit you.
What matters is documentation. Go to the emergency room if you need to. Follow up with treatment. Tell your providers what you are actually experiencing rather than minimizing it. Those records are what turn “she wasn’t really hurt” into something an insurance company has to answer for.
”We’re Not Paying” Is a Position, Not a Verdict
Adjusters repeat denials because denials work. Most people hear it a few times and stop calling. A denial is an opening posture, and it holds only as long as no one forces the carrier to actually evaluate what happens if the claim proceeds.
A well-built demand changes that calculation. It lays out the facts, the medical record, and the exposure. Sometimes the response is a negotiation. Sometimes carriers who spent months refusing simply send a check without responding at all — one has even been known to have someone hand-deliver it.
What to Do Now
Get medical attention and keep going to your appointments. Write down what you remember about the crash while it is fresh. Do not give a recorded statement to either insurer before you have talked to a lawyer. And do not let a string of denials, or a firm that passed on your case, convince you that you don’t have one.
If two insurance companies are blaming each other, that is a reason to look harder at your claim — not to walk away from it.
Full Transcript
Our client was a passenger in a vehicle, and there was a dispute on whether the driver that was driving her was at fault or the person that they collided with.
And Geico, who represented the other car, was like, we’re not paying, we’re not paying, we’re not paying, we’re not paying.
And the issue with that case was, like, the client didn’t have a ton of physical injuries. It was more of a mental thing. Like, she had been in a car wreck previously and had basically a panic attack, and they took her to the hospital.
A lot of law firms were like, man, I’m not even, I’m not touching this. And Geico kept saying, we’re not paying, we’re not paying.
So we wrote a demand to both insurance companies, to Geico, who said they weren’t paying, and the car that she was in, to her driver. And they both ended up paying, so about $300,000.
They just sent us a check. They did not even respond. In fact, one of them actually had somebody come out and hand deliver the check to my house.