I'm so sorry about the accident and I hope that he heals up well soon. Here's what I've learned from my accident in May:

1. The responsible insurance company will replace the bike right away. I had a new bike within 3 weeks (most of that was because my LBS put a quote together for me the next day and my insurance company fronted the money and then got reimbursement from the driver's insurance).

2. The responsible insurance company will reimburse all medical costs (your costs as well as the payments that your health insurance company paid) as well as any other expenses related to the accident (I live alone and had to have someone come in a clean for me a couple of times, I've had to buy medical supplies, etc.) as well as a "settlement" (usually 2-3 times the total cost of expenses). They won't make any of these payments until a waiver is signed saying that you are completely healed and that they are no longer liable for any medical bills. Since I have another 6-9 months before we can determine whether or not I need surgery, I'm not going to see a penny from them for this for probably a year or so.

3. Insurance companies set aside a reserve for each injury case. If your final expenses + settlement fall within that reserve amount, you're within their budget and you'll be fine. If they lowball the reserve, then you may have to go to court later. In my case, my initial x-rays didn't show any fractures or cartilage damage so the reserve was set too low. When I finally had the MRI and found out I had a fracture, a pretty bad adema, and major cartilage damage, things got a little rough.

4. The insurance company stopped returning my calls and I had no choice but to go to an attorney. He's managed to get them to up the reserve significantly. He will take 28% of the final settlement, but I have a feeling that he saved me a lot of money. Another nice thing is that I've been paying a lot of medical expenses out of pocket (I ran out of my physical therapy allotments about a month ago). My attorney has relationships with a lot of health care providers in my area and has the PT group sending my bills directly to him. He will be paying them out of the settlement. That's saving me about $250/week out of pocket right now. He also is handling all communication with the responsible insurance company and my health insurance company, and previously that was eating up hours of my time and keeping me awake at night in annoyance. All I do now is hand over my receipts and he takes care of the rest.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that this is going to be a process. I hope that he heals quickly and that he has no lingering affects. Tell him to hang in there -- it does get better.

Susie