Does the insurance just decide your car is totaled and that’s it? Can you appeal? What are the consequences of having a car being declared totaled?
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Most of these answers are wrong. It means that your car has sustained damage to a point where the estimated cost to repair it exceeds a certain percentage of the car’s value. This percentage varies by jurisdiction, but unlike why most people are claiming, it is less than 100%.
When your car has been “totaled”, the insurance company will offer you the entire value of the car. At this point, you can either accept, and you’ll receive a payment, and never see the car again. (It will be sold at auction or crushed, but it’s no concern of yours.)
Or you can offer to “buy” your car from the insurance company, and they’ll subtract the salvage value from your payment, and you keep the car, which you are allowed to repair, part out, keep as a lawn ornament, whatever. However, it will be “branded” with a salvage title. In many states, you must have a special safety inspection before driving it again, and you probably won’t be able to obtain collision coverage on the vehicle, and it will be almost impossible to sell the vehicle later. (E.g. banks don’t generally finance salvage cars.) But if the damage was just cosmetic (e.g, your trusty 10-yr-old Civic looking like a golf ball with hail dimples), driving a “totaled” car can really work out for you.
In either case, if you have a loan, your bank gets first dibs on the money. If you owe more than it’s worth and don’t have gap insurance, you’ll need to make arrangements to pay off the rest of your loan. (The bank is going to want their money sooner rather than later, since their collateral is now a rapidly-rusting hulk.)
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