The present invention relates to vehicular accident analysis and more particularly to analysis of information regarding an accident for triage and related purposes.
Organizations such as insurance companies and others have the task of investigating auto accidents to resolve property and injury claims. Frequently, these organizations will analyze incoming claims to apply the proper expertise to the type of claim. As an example, an accident involving the death of a vehicle occupant may require different expertise and handling than a minor accident in a fast-food drive-through line. One of the first tasks in a claim analysis is to review vehicle damage and write a repair estimate. This can be the earliest indication of the severity of the impact.
While this information is not sufficient to determine a reasonable estimate of impact severity using more detailed information, it can give an indication of what resources should be assigned to evaluate the claim. However, typically this indication is subject to significant subjective analysis and can be extremely unreliable. An insurance company employee, often in a position having high turnover, will analyze a damage report and possibly photographs of the damaged vehicle. This employee's analysis is subjective and the data relied upon can provide inconsistent determinations depending on a given analyst. Nor is there any in-house learning that occurs over time such that improved initial analysis is achieved.
Accordingly, industry analysis confirms that as many as 40% of accidents of a low severity nature are at least initially subjectively analyzed as a high severity impact. As a result, claims are forwarded to a potentially incorrect resource for handling. Low severity resources typically involve property claim handling and auditing of claims. When a later injury claim associated with such an accident is received, evidence and information to dispute such a claim may be unavailable. Such initial poor diagnoses lead to losses for the insurance industry in the billions of dollars annually.
Other resources such as trained engineers and accident reconstructionists can be employed later in a claims process to derive an estimate of impact severity using repair estimates and other information. However, this information does not provide timely or cost effective information to allow the appropriate allocation of resources early in a claim life cycle.