In Cohoes, many people start with a calculator after they receive a first offer or after they’ve begun medical treatment. That’s not a bad instinct—but the tool is only as reliable as its inputs.
A calculator can be useful for:
- Estimating current medical expenses and out-of-pocket costs
- Forecasting approximate wage loss if you have pay stubs and employer verification
- Roughly organizing categories like therapy, prescriptions, and transportation
A calculator is likely to mislead if you:
- Use incomplete medical information (common when treatment is still ongoing)
- Estimate future treatment without objective findings
- Don’t account for comparative fault arguments that often arise in serious injury cases
- Assume there’s only one responsible party when commercial crashes can involve insurers, carriers, and companies beyond the driver
Bottom line: treat the estimate as a starting point—not a prediction.


