#Accident Benefits

[stalawyers]

ICBC No Fault Insurance Model: What does this mean?

In recent years, there have been major changes to the ICBC system. ICBC insurance claim no fault model changes restrict an accident victim’s right to bring litigation after a motor vehicle accident. These changes have caused a lot of confusion for accident victims, especially when it comes to claims for compensation. If you are wondering whether you can still make an insurance claim or want to know how ICBC’s current “no fault” insurance scheme impacts your compensation, this article is for you.

Top 5 FAQs regarding ICBC’s no fault insurance model

1) Can I make a claim if I have been in a car accident?

The new ICBC system introduced May 1, 2021 is as ICBC insurance claim no fault model https://simpsonthomas.com/blog/2021/08/24/icbc-no-fault-auto-insurance-model-what-you-need-to-know/ that all but eliminates your ability to file a lawsuit against a negligent driver.

If a car crash occurs after April 30th, 2021, and you fall victim to it, you cannot sue the at-fault driver for compensation for your injuries, unless authorities convict the driver of a criminal driving offence related to the crash, such as drunk driving.

While you are no longer able to sue the at-fault driver for compensation except in limited situations, you can make an ICBC insurance claim under Enhanced Care for accident benefits. Accident benefits under Enhanced Care include medical care (for example, chiropractic treatments, medication, and counselling) and income replacement if you can’t work because of the accident injuries. There are no more damages for “pain and suffering.”

If the accident seriously injures you, you qualify for a lump sum payment as compensation for permanent impairments like loss of mobility, scarring, amputation, or other enduring damages to a body part or function. The ICBC no fault model determines a percentage for injuries based on the impairment level and category/type, and this percentage dictates the lump sum amount you receive for your injury.

2) Do I have to use up my extended health benefits before ICBC will pay for treatment?

Yes. If you have coverage from another provider (e.g., extended health care through your employment or disability insurance that you purchased on your own), ICBC considers your other insurance as the primary payer for most medical expenses. https://simpsonthomas.com/blog/2022/02/04/icbcs-no-fault-insurance-model-can-you-claim-out-of-pocket-expenses/ So even if you weren’t at fault for the accident, you have to claim against your own coverage first when you bring an ICBC claim.

3) How much will ICBC compensate me for a written off vehicle?

If your vehicle is unrepairable (also known as a “total loss” or a “write off”), ICBC calculates your vehicle’s value at the time of the accident and pays you out based on its assessment of fair market value. ICBC will consider things like the year, make and model of your vehicle, its total mileage and its pre-crash condition. You may still need to pay deductible if your vehicle is written off.

4) I’ve missed time from work due to my injuries, will ICBC compensate me for this?

If you were employed at the time of the accident and you are unable to work because of your injuries, you are eligible to receive wage loss benefits. https://simpsonthomas.com/blog/2021/11/25/icbcs-no-fault-insurance-can-you-receive-wage-loss-compensation-under-enhanced-care/  

If you are eligible, income replacement under ICBC’s Enhanced Care covers up to 90 percent of your net income each week, up to a cap of $105,500 gross annual income (in other words, if you earn more than that per year, you will not be adequately compensated unless you purchased additional coverage). Under the old ICBC system a car accident victim could sue the at-fault driver to recover all lost wages, not just a portion of them.

Even if you are eligible for income replacement, you will not receive wage loss benefits until the 8th day after the accident. In other words, there is a 7-day waiting period before income replacement kicks in, and ICBC benefits do not cover your first week of lost wages. https://simpsonthomas.com/blog/2021/11/25/icbcs-no-fault-insurance-can-you-receive-wage-loss-compensation-under-enhanced-care/

Another catch? The ICBC insurance claim no fault model is secondary to any other wage loss benefits available to you, such as an employer plan, Employment Insurance, or disability benefits. Because ICBC no-fault wage loss benefits are secondary, you MUST apply for other benefits first, and then your income replacement benefit calculation will take those benefits into account.

5) If you caused an accident, can others still sue you?

Yes, others can sue you in specific situations if you caused the accident. For instance, if authorities convict you of impaired driving related to the crash, injured parties can sue you. If you played a different role in causing the accident, such as a pub owner accused of serving too much alcohol to a patron who then caused a car accident, they can also sue you. Importantly, even if the accident injured you and you were entirely at fault, you qualify for accident benefits under Enhanced Care. https://simpsonthomas.com/blog/2021/08/24/icbc-no-fault-auto-insurance-model-what-you-need-to-know/

Contact STA if You Have Questions about No Fault

About Simpson Thomas and Associates:

STA is a prominent law firm, with a rich history of over 50 years. It is based in the lower mainland with offices in Vancouver and Surrey.

The firm is active in various practice areas. Namely, personal injury, family law, immigration, employment law, estate litigation, and insurance denials.

STA commits to serving the community with its legal expertise. Also, actively support causes that enhance the well-being of individuals and families.

Reach out and consult with us:

Phone: (604) 689 – 8888

Email: info@simpsonthomas.com

[naamahdarling]

Labor, on its own, has no inherent value. The willingness or ability to labor does not translate to virtue. It can confer financial value, since everyone should be compensated for their labor, but it absolutely does not have inherent moral value.

Disabled people are not obligated to perform for you. They are not required, morally, to break themselves in order to earn some sort of personal value and prove their "worth" to society. They do not need to exhaust every possible means of survival to warrant aid, or spend the entirety of their existence pursuing the same amount of production as others even though it takes everything they have and leaves no room for anything else. They are not obligated to push their limits.

If that pisses you off because YOU have to work to the limit, or beyond, your problem is that you are not being paid enough or you are being asked to do the work of more than one person. Not that disabled people get help for "nothing".

You deserve better, too, you lovable dingus! Every single thing that benefits disabled people will benefit you and the ones you love, either immediately, or eventually. All of it!

[draco-glacialis]

Billy: If you got arrested what would be the charges?

Lilia: Theft.

Jen: Disturbing the peace.

Rio: Aggravated assault.

Alice: Arson.

Agatha: All of the above. In that order, probably.

[potato-lord-but-not]

I offer to you the ship of Roland Cummings, Delphine Cummings, and Charlie Dowd that has been absolutely rotting my brain and is ripe for Charlie angst. I talk about them a bit here in which I discuss multiple Charlie ships but I must spread the propaganda of them o7

Ohhhhhh despite not really being Roland/Noel girlie I can indeed see the appeal 👀

[dinoserious]

see tiber is aesthetically a fish but structurally? he is a lizard

[todayisafridaynight]

[bad-traffic-smp-ideas]

Insurance Life.

You can take out a life insurance policy on one person each session, including yourself. If they lose a life, you get a piece of enchanted diamond gear at random.

Here's the catch: If someone finds out you killed someone for the life insurance policy you put on them, your inventory is reset as penance. This includes chat death messages indicating they were slain by you. Ergo, you have to make it look like an accident. Trap them.

PLEEEASE I DON'T WANNA GO BACK TO PERSONAL FINANCE CLAAASS-

[pennedinblood]

as of ten minutes ago we are officially Jobless™️. my sign to retire early and devote the remainder of my existence to writing toxic old man yaoi

[creator-chaos]

12 episodes into Kuuga:

They were crazy in 2000, they'll kill anything on screen

Oh it's like GAY gay

[tearfest]

sorry to log on n rant but i need to rant

[brittlebutch]

forgive any incomprehensibility but the notion that the world can be cleanly split between the two immutable categories of 'the neurotypical' and 'the neurodiverse' ignores the reality that any person can at any point for any reason be arbitrarily 'diagnosed' by a 'professional' and shuttled between categories with no regard for the notions of 'accurate traits' or 'specific symptoms'. nice dichotomy what lies outside of it? you understand me?

[capricioussun]

Number 2 for anybody you want!

Can they take care of a plant? What about a pet? What about a child?

I'm throwing this one to Wingdings bc. I love him <3

No, sort of, yes (dubiously). He’s a bit scatterbrained at times, and doesn't typically have much interest in plants beyond studying them. If he had to during an experiment he'd do fine, but casually, he has absolutely no green thumb whatsoever and would forget to take care of it frequently. That, plus not knowing the signs of unwellness well enough to catch them before the plant died either way </3

As for a pet, I'd give a solid "eh", because he certainly wouldn't let something starve, but he dedicates most of his time to his work and interests, he wouldn't be a good pet owner for anything above the demand level of like, a cat. But he could probably handle a cat. And the company would admittedly be nice...

Children falls into yes (dubiously) because he’s not necessarily the best gauge of parental behaviors, so while he'd certainly care for a child and do his best for their health, too, he would also probably let them do or participate in dangerous things at times </3 He was a mostly good dad to his own kids though! Before the "shattering".

[mug-and-friends]

Forgive me if you've gotten this question already but you're a bug specialist... with no bugs?

Haha, yep! I love to study them, but I don't think I could keep one just because they're 'cool', you know? It's alot of responsibility caring for a pokemon, and I've got two sweethearts in my life already to focus on.

My Lucario and Sableye each kinda came into my life themselves, I never even took the gym challenge as a kid. Didn't plan to get any pokemon until a certain skinny wild Riolu kept freaking stealing my sandwiches out my hands... Ahem.

Pokemon are friends and pets and work assistants and family! One day I might have the room and funds to love and cherish something as AWESOME as a scolipede off my own back, but until that time I'm not going to commit to bonding with a cool bug pokemon when I'll have to rely on things like lab facilities to take care of them instead of being able to dedicate time to them that they deserve.

Hope that makes sense??

Of course, if one does come into my life (Like lil Pobble did) and I'm able to, I would LOVE to have a bug!!!

[orcelito]

I think I cried harder today over my dad's jackets than I did at his deathbed. That was a miserable time of course, a memory that will likely be seared into my brain until I die, but I cried... I think a normal amount, all things considered. More than I ever usually do of course, but I typically don't cry At All. All this free crying is certainly surreal.

The jackets, though. I was put in charge of doing his laundry, because we don't want to pack up dirty clothes. I was expecting it to be unpleasant bc my dad's dirty clothes - gross. But really, it was much more unpleasant in that... those were his. It felt wrong to touch them. Felt wrong to treat his jackets as gross. Because they were just his jackets. They weren't even in the hamper. And then I was remembering him wearing them, and then I was crying. Again. And again. Weeping over these damn jackets.

Then I found a shirt on his bed that still smelled like him. It smelled like a Hug From Dad. And that set me off crying even harder.

In total, I think I cried like 6 times within 40 minutes. It took me that long to finish sorting the damn clothes bc I just. Was a wreck. Like, what are you supposed to do when you're living life like normal, vaguely hopeful bc you're taking steps to secure your own happiness, and then 4 days later you're sorting your dad's laundry because he fucking died. Suddenly. Without a goodbye.

And you have to worry about his lack of a will (even under an ideal situation, only 2 heirs and no conflicts between us, probate's a fucking Bitch), and arranging the funeral, and prepping his obituary, and picking out pictures, and writing a speech bc you want to talk at his funeral, of Course you want to talk at his funeral, but even just thinking about anecdotes you could share has you crying yet again.

I've cried more times in the past 3 days than likely the entirety of last YEAR. And that's WITH my cat, and uncle, and family friend dying. Those all hurt, my uncle most of all, & I was real fucked up over it. But this? This was my Dad. Likely the person I'd have named 2nd closest to me in my life, second only to my sister. He wasn't perfect, but he did so much for me throughout my entire life. All he wanted was to raise us to be happy and independent. And he accomplished it, we're getting by without him, but we still wanted several more decades with him. He was only 57. We should've gotten several more decades with him.

But here we are now. Playing investigators to his life, digging into all his shit, trying to find documents and take inventory of all his things, and learning Many things about him in the process. In his lockbox of sensitive documents, like his SSN and birth certificate and all that stuff, we found an old letter. About a decade old now, written in my hand. Right at the very top, we found that he'd kept the letter I wrote to him telling him frankly about my struggles and the things I wanted him to do better. He kept it. He tried to take it to heart. He looked at it again, sometime more recently than all the rest of the documents. That was on top.

His love for us is evident everywhere. The pictures he has hanging up all over the place, majority of them with us in them. The old fathers day cards placed on display in his bedroom bookshelf. The gifts we gave him, even stupid little knick knacks, placed around his apartment with pride. I wish we'd taken more videos of him. I don't want to forget the sound of his voice. I don't want to forget his smell either, the smell of a Hug From Dad, but I still tossed that shirt into the wash even though it felt like saying yet another goodbye.

It's the suddenness that hurts the most, I think. We were planning on having him help me finally get my license this year. My final words to him, the last thing he would've seen from me, were messages asking up on whether he'd called his car insurance company to make sure there wouldn't be problems. I should've called him more. I don't know if I'm going to learn from this.

I cut my 2 weeks off early to have time to grieve and to work on things for the funeral and settling the estate. The last thing I'd wanna do right now is selling fucking bubble tea in a job I already decided to leave. So here I am without a job, though with potentially two life insurance policy payouts to come. Inheriting half his 401k. Inheriting couches, knickknacks, keepsakes, paintings, art pieces, maybe even his guitar and other furniture if we can figure out what to do about space (I don't have room for this furniture, I don't know if I even have room for the couches, but God do I want to keep so much of this furniture). It has me even considering keeping one of his guns, just one. A tiny little revolver, it sits so comfortably in my hand. I don't even want to use it for anything. I just want to have it, keep it stored in a drawer with its ammo kept separate. I don't like guns, but this is a part of him. He loved collecting guns. He was about as responsible with them as someone can be, keeping them locked in a lockbox and impressing upon his children the importance of gun safety (I've known the basic gun safety rules ever since I was a little kid. Of course, of course, of course.) It reminds me of him. It's horrifically easy to have a gun in Indiana. I apparently don't even need a permit to carry anymore. (I have no intention to ever carry this in public.)

It's all a cycle. Business, grief, thoughts about my future. Round and round, like the most nauseating carousel in existence. I don't know how I'm still so functional. My skills with compartmentalization have been my lifesaver.

And im just thinking about the story my dad's best friend shared today. About a friend of theirs who lost her father. She reached out after hearing about my dad to share his words with her: "it's okay to grieve, but don't make his death your life".

He explicitly referenced himself in this, saying if he were to die suddenly that he wouldn't want us to define ourselves by it. Grief is expected, but he wants us to be able to move on. He's always wanted us to establish ourselves and make ourselves happy. He wouldn't want to be a weight holding us back from that.

So every time I start to feel guilty for thinking about having nicer furniture or using his life insurance payout to fund the rest of my college, I remind myself of that. Thinking about the material isn't a bad thing. I'm only human. And in the end, he'd Want me to be thinking about it. He never intended to die, certainly not without warning like this, so he would've only encouraged me being pragmatic about it all.

He only ever wanted us to be happy. So I need to do what I can to live up to that.

I love him. I miss him already.

[amunisence]

Friendly advice for those with computers or potentially getting a computer: SSDs are worth it.

A SSD is a solid state drive. It serves the same purpose as at HDD or hard disk drive that is found on most computers. The only real difference on a surface level is that a hard drive uses a disk and an SSD doesn't not. The only part you should care about is that a SSD runs a lot faster than a HDD. This means that a computer with a SSD as the primary storage (or the C: drive in many cases) will allow the PC to startup and shut down much faster, access/manage files faster, and last much much longer than a HDD.

If you ever turned a computer and can't do anything because the "Disk" in task manager is at 100%, it's because of the HDD.

You can have both an HDD and an SSD, but Windows (the OS or operating system) will run better on the SSD. The computer will turn on faster. It will shut down faster.

How do I know this? I've seen it twice (technically three times). I put an SSD on my old laptop from around 2015 and reinstalled windows it. The startup and shutdown process mimics a new laptop (the SSD was NOT brand new). This was a laptop that died on me right before my college exams, so it's not my primary PC anymore.

The other more compelling example is I did the same thing to my parents' old 2017(? maybe older) office computer. My parents have complained for years about it running slow. The new SSD I put on it is the first solution that actually brought new life into it.

By the way, you might think a new hard drive would have a similar effect of the new SSD, but a new hard drive is slower than a new or old SSD. It was something I experienced in my current PC while trying to switch to an SSD with larger storage. Windows had always been on my SSD and as soon as I put that OS on the hard drive, it was significantly slower.

A SSD will allow your computer to run well for so much longer. I cannot figure out why the worthwhile investment in a SSD is understated, and I won't shut up about it. Sorry if this was hard to follow. When I'm done with college I'm making an informative comic/info graphic for this.

[cringelordofchaos]

I don't like being Serbian anymore