I’m a life actuary, so not sure how to navigate the following situation, so I’m reaching out to you P/C folks, since I’m not completely buying what I’m seeing on the interwebs so far.
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After an auto accident, how is a “pain and suffering” amount determined? (I’m trying to get an idea of when/how this applies.)
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How is the above affected by the fact the other driver is uninsured (if at all)?
From what I’ve gathered so far my course of action should be to get an attorney so they can argue with my own carrier, but I’d rather avoid that step, if possible. If it becomes necessary, I’d rather go into the situation knowing a little more than I do at the moment, so everyone can be reasonable about what’s going on.
Thanks in advance for any thoughts you can share. 
(Disclaimer: I’m not looking for company-specific information, of course - just general knowledge some of y’all have that I am lacking.)
You probably won’t get a consistent definition on how to determine “pain and suffering”. My definition will be different than your definition which will be different than your attorney’s which will be different than… you get the point.
Economic damages (loss of wages, medical bills, etc) are easy enough to quantify but pain and suffering is a major part of non-economic damages. Items that are hard/impossible to quantify get bucketed here - literal pain and suffering from an injury, loss of consortium, emotional distress, etc.
Not saying that people don’t deserve some type of compensation but my personal opinion is that pain and suffering is this nebulous black box that attorneys use to jack up demands and/or verdicts.
Not an attorney but I’d imagine an uninsured individual doesn’t have the strongest financial position so tacking on a significant amount for pain & suffering won’t really matter. The likelihood of collecting is low.
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