WreckPilot asks about the crash, your injuries and treatment, fault and insurance, and your losses, then estimates what your claim may be worth using a published formula: medical bills times a severity multiplier, reduced for your share of fault and capped by the other driver's policy limit. It takes about three minutes, needs no account, and shows every step of the math. It is an educational estimate, not legal advice.
Getting started
Your live estimate starts after a few answers
The calculator follows the same steps an insurance adjuster or attorney uses to value an injury claim, using California's rules and a published formula you can check line by line.
Your losses. Medical bills, lost wages and vehicle damage, added at face value.
Pain and suffering. Your medical bills times a severity multiplier from 1.5× to 5.5×, adjusted for ER visits, hospital stays, surgery and how soon you got care. Whiplash and soft-tissue injuries are capped at 3×.
Your share of fault. California uses pure comparative negligence, so the total is reduced by your percentage of fault, even above 50%.
The insurance limit. The injury amount is capped at the at-fault driver’s bodily-injury limit, plus your own underinsured-motorist coverage if you have it.
What you would keep. An after-fee figure assuming a typical one-third attorney contingency fee.
A rear-end crash in Los Angeles leaves the driver with a broken wrist, an ER visit, no fault and an at-fault driver with a $100,000 policy:
| Medical bills + lost wages + car damage | $10,000 + $3,000 + $5,000 = $18,000 |
| Multiplier (moderate injury, ER visit) | 3.45× to 4.75× |
| Pain and suffering | $24,500 to $37,500 |
| Estimated case value | $42,500 to $55,500 |
| After a one-third attorney fee | about $28,300 to $37,000 |
At 20% fault, the range drops to $34,000 to $44,400. If the other driver carries only California's $30,000 minimum, the injury portion is capped at $30,000 however serious the injury. That is why the policy limit is often the most important number in a California claim.
It doesn't know whether fault will be disputed, how a particular insurer negotiates, or what medical liens you will have to repay. It also doesn't cover wrongful death, punitive damages or the cost of future care. For serious injuries, contested fault or low policy limits, talk to a licensed California attorney. WreckPilot is not a law firm and the estimate is not legal advice.
Nothing you have to look up first. It helps to know your medical bills so far, any wages you lost, the repair or total-loss figure for your car, and the other driver’s insurance limit, but you can give your best guess or say you don’t know. The more you answer, the narrower the range and the higher the confidence score.
It is free and there is no account to create. At the end it asks for an email and phone number so we can send your results. Law firms see your case only if you tick the box allowing them to contact you. Your answers are encrypted, and the privacy policy explains how to see, correct or delete them.
Say so. The estimate is then shown without a cap, alongside what you would get if the other driver carries only California’s minimum of $30,000 per person. Some drivers carry only the minimum, so it is worth asking the other driver’s insurer for the limit in writing.
Yes. The vehicle damage you enter is added to your medical bills and lost wages. To work out the vehicle side in detail, including whether the car is a total loss and the sales tax and fees a total-loss payout must include, use the car damage calculator.
Because the multiplier insurers and attorneys use for pain and suffering is itself a range, and real cases settle within one. Before fault and the policy limit are applied, the low end of the injury range is never below 1.8 times your medical bills, the lowest yearly average in the Insurance Research Council’s study of 7.4 million paid claims.
You can use it to check whether an offer is in a reasonable range, but it is an educational estimate, not legal advice or a demand figure. Watch the deadlines: most California injury lawsuits must be filed within two years of the crash, and claims against a city, county or state agency must be presented within six months.
More detail: the full methodology and data sources, and the California car damage and total loss calculator.