re: How does a totaled vehicle is determined?

It’s 70%

Ask ChatGPT…honestly I have no idea why people ask a dumb message board when you can get more accurate answers with AI

I literally just went through this one year ago and they used 70%

You'd be amazed at what they call "totaled" these days. We have a small fleet of company owned vehicles, and one of our guys got into a very minor wreck a couple of years ago. He had to swerve to miss a car, ended up on the side of the road and ran the passenger side up against a small tree. Like a crepe myrtle or Bradford Pear, small trunk. No damage to the hood, radiator, or drivetrain. Just body panels and a door.

He was still driving it for about a month while we were waiting on insurance claims and repair estimates, then they came back and the body panel replacement cost and value of the car and ended up totaling it. It was fairly new at the time, I think a 2019 model year and this wreck happened in 2024. We had only owned it maybe 2.5 years. Paid around $20k for it and ended up getting a check for around $15k from insurance. There's no way replacing two body panels and a door panel would cost that much.

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I'm setting the likelihood her phone was the reason for the accident at 99.99%.

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Negative!

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There's no way replacing two body panels and a door panel would cost that much.

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Depends on what kind of tech the vehicle was equipped with. Nowadays the accident you described might involve replacing a couple of cameras, blind spot sensors, parking assist sensors, lane keep sensors, and all kinds of other tech gadgets that drive up the repair cost.

It’s been 25 years since I was an adjuster. But if I remember correctly the method an adjuster can “construct” a total loss by deducting salvage value from repair costs. This was encouraged to be done a lot of an insured was insistent about OEM verses LKQ, if the chosen shop was notoriously difficult to deal with (history of unreasonable supplements charging higher than established prevailing labor rates).

I’m glad I got out of that business, in the end I hated the company I worked for because they chiseled the insured, I hated the repair facilities because they (by and large not always) chiseled the companies, and finally I hated the insured because the had ignorant views regarding the value of their vehicle and could never understand why the insurance company would not include the non premium accounted for $12,000 after market stereo system when valuing their 1997 Altima.

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Is the amount of to fix it more than the blue book value of the car?

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Sort of.

It's normally a percentage of the vehicle's pre loss value. Most carriers just use 75% (unless they are required to use a lower number) and sometimes they use the total loss formula which is IF Repair + Salvage > Pre-loss ACV = Total

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I literally just went through this one year ago and they used 70%

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"They" are allowed to pay the ACV minus salvage for ANY damage to a car. "They" can "total" a Ferrari 296 Speciale with an inch-long scratch on it if they like. They could also pay someone twice ACV because they were feeling generous. That does not change the fact that in LA the codified definition of a totalled vehicle is 75% of the ACV. There are reasons an insurance company will go below the LA threshold of 75% the biggest of which is if a car is close to 75% there is a very good chance there will be underlying damage that is missed pushing the car above 75% of ACV for repair. An anecdotal instance of an insurance company using a different number does not change the LA code that defines a totalled car.