THE COLLISION & INSURANCE GLOSSARY
Quick Answer
Fifty terms that decide Texas collision claims and repairs, defined the way we’d explain them across the counter — plain English first, the statute or published price where one exists, and the honest caveat where the industry usually omits it. Every definition mirrors the live pages of this site and can be cited directly; each term carries its own anchor, and the deep guides are linked wherever a definition opens a bigger subject.
A to Z
FIFTY TERMS, DEFINED STRAIGHT
Insurance and body-shop language does real work in a claim — the difference between R&I and R&R is a line item, the difference between agreed value and stated value is thousands of dollars, and the word supplement is the difference between a complete repair and a cheap one. These are the fifty that come up daily on our shop floor, alphabetical, each honest enough to quote.
- ACV — Actual Cash Value (money)
- What the car was worth the moment before the damage: replacement cost minus depreciation, mileage, and condition. It caps every claim — repairs get paid up to it, a total loss pays it out. It is not what you paid, and not what you owe (see Gap Coverage).
- ADAS (systems)
- Advanced Driver Assistance Systems — the windshield cameras, bumper radar, and parking sonar behind lane-keeping, emergency braking, and blind-spot warnings. Repairs that disturb them require calibration; DG schedules it through vetted calibration specialists inside the repair timeline, with the printed report verified before delivery.
- Adjuster (claims)
- The insurer’s representative who investigates and values your claim — at a desk from photos, in the field, or as an independent contractor after storms. Texas puts real deadlines on the decisions they make for your own carrier.
- Aftermarket Part (parts)
- A replacement part built by someone other than the original manufacturer. Cheaper, variable in fit and metallurgy — and never the insurer’s call: Tex. Ins. Code §1952.301 bars carriers from dictating parts brand or condition. DG argues OEM first in writing; aftermarket goes on only with your sign-off.
- Aluminum Panel (structure)
- Hoods, doors, and tailgates on many modern vehicles — entire F-150 bodies. Aluminum work-hardens when struck (see that entry), repairs more slowly than steel, demands dedicated tools in an isolated bay so steel dust can’t start galvanic corrosion, and prices in the upper half of published ranges.
- Betterment (money)
- An insurer’s deduction when a new part leaves the car better than pre-loss — classically a new tire replacing a half-worn one. Legitimate in that narrow lane; worth scrutiny anywhere else. If a betterment line surprises you on an estimate, ask exactly what got “better.”
- Blend / Blending (paint)
- Refinishing partway into the adjacent, undamaged panels so fresh color fades imperceptibly into original paint. It’s why a proper door respray touches the fender and quarter — and why a repair quoted without blend panels is a repair you’ll see in sunlight.
- Bumper Cover (parts)
- The painted flexible fascia everyone calls “the bumper.” The actual bumper — a metal or composite beam with an energy absorber — sits behind it. The split is why bumper estimates range from a $300–$800 refinish to structural work: the cover hides what decides the price.
- CLUE Database (claims)
- The industry’s Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange — the shared record where claims live for about seven years, visible to any insurer quoting you. It logs claims, not tickets, and it marks their character: a not-at-fault entry reads very differently from an at-fault one.
- Collision Coverage (coverage)
- The optional coverage that pays for your own car’s crash damage regardless of fault, minus your deductible. It’s the fast door when the other driver’s carrier stalls — your insurer pays now and chases theirs through subrogation.
- Comprehensive Coverage (coverage)
- The optional coverage for everything that isn’t a collision: hail, theft, vandalism, flood, falling limbs, and animal strikes (yes, hitting a deer is comprehensive). Every DFW hail claim on this site runs through it.
- CR-3 Crash Report (law)
- The official Texas crash report written by a responding officer — the neutral referee adjusters trust on disputed fault, ordered through TxDOT once filed. The old self-filed CR-2 “blue form” was retired in 2017; when no officer responds, your own documentation carries the claim.
- Date of Loss (claims)
- The day the damage actually happened — the date that decides which policy responds, which storm a hail claim belongs to, and when the policy’s filing window starts running. On hail, tying dents to a verified storm date is the whole evidentiary game, which is why our storm log exists.
- Deductible (money)
- Your contractual share of a claim on your own policy — due once per claim, not once per panel or per shop visit. Your out-of-pocket on a covered repair is typically your deductible, once. What it is, when it’s owed, and when it isn’t: the deductible guide.
- Deductible Assistance (money)
- A shop discount absorbed from its own margin. Legal on Texas auto claims when everything billed to the insurer is 100% honest — the famous “waiving deductibles is a crime” law (HB 2102) covers real property, not vehicles; the auto line is Penal Code §35.02, which polices dishonest billing. DG covers the first $1,000 on qualifying hail claims.
- Diminished Value (money)
- The market value a car loses simply by carrying an accident history, even after excellent repair. In Texas it’s recoverable from the at-fault driver’s liability insurer on top of the repair — generally not from your own carrier. Evidence and process: the DV guide.
- DRP — Direct Repair Program (claims)
- A voluntary agreement where a shop accepts an insurer’s pricing and procedures in exchange for referrals — what “network shop” or “preferred shop” actually means. A business arrangement, not a quality ranking, and never mandatory: §1952.301 keeps the choice yours.
- Energy Absorber (structure)
- The crushable structure between bumper cover and beam that spends impact energy so the body doesn’t. It does its job invisibly — and gets destroyed invisibly, which is why “minor” bumper taps deserve teardown before anyone calls them minor.
- Estimate (process)
- The itemized repair plan: every operation, part, and hour, priced line by line. The first insurance estimate prices only visible damage on conservative assumptions — it’s an opening number, completed later by supplements. How to read one line by line: the estimate decoder.
- First-Party Claim (claims)
- A claim you file with your own insurer under your own policy — collision, comprehensive, UM. It’s the kind Texas’s prompt-payment deadlines protect; a claim against the other driver’s carrier (see Third-Party Claim) enjoys none of those clocks.
- Frame Damage (structure)
- Structural deformation — on modern unibody cars, the shell itself shifted. Symptoms are fit and geometry: doors that catch, gaps that taper, a pull no alignment cures. Symptoms only raise the question; a computerized measurement answers it in millimeters, free at DG.
- Gap Coverage (coverage)
- Optional coverage paying the difference between the ACV an insurer owes on a total and the larger balance still owed on the loan. Without it, an upside-down loan survives the car. Lenders can’t force it on you unless the contract says so — but on new financing it earns its keep.
- Hail Claim Window (hail)
- The policy-imposed deadline for filing a hail claim. No Texas statute sets it — the policy’s prompt-notice language does, and most carriers hold hail claims to about one year from the date of loss, sometimes less. Inside it, late discovery is routine; past it, approval is the rare exception. The full clock, explained.
- HV Disable (process)
- The high-voltage shutdown procedure performed before structural or major repair work on an electric or hybrid vehicle — isolating the battery system per the manufacturer’s protocol so cutting, welding, and pulling happen on a safe car. Standard practice on every EV that crosses our floor.
- Liability Coverage (coverage)
- The coverage Texas requires: it pays for the other party’s damage when you’re at fault — and never for your own car. A liability-only policy plus a hailstorm means nobody to bill, which is exactly the honest math our liability-only guide walks through.
- Lienholder (money)
- The lender on a financed car’s title. Claim checks routinely name them alongside you, lenders can require repairs before releasing money, and on a total loss they’re paid first from the settlement. The full terrain: the leased-and-financed guide.
- Loaner Car (service)
- A shop-owned courtesy vehicle. DG’s fleet runs 50+ vehicles, free to customers for the length of the repair — billed to the insurer when the policy includes rental coverage, still free to the customer when it doesn’t, and never metered by a coverage day cap. The mechanics, stated out loud.
- Loss of Use (money)
- Compensation for being deprived of your car by someone else’s negligence — typically measured by reasonable rental value, and under Texas case law recoverable even if you never actually rent, total loss included. One of the most under-claimed items in third-party claims.
- Metal Memory (hail)
- Steel’s tendency to return to its stamped factory shape when worked correctly — the physics that makes PDR possible. A technician massages the low spot from behind and the panel relaxes back to the form it was pressed into. Aluminum has far less of it (see Work-Hardening).
- OEM Part (parts)
- Original Equipment Manufacturer — the part built by or for the factory that built the car, to the tolerances the car was engineered around. DG’s ladder on every estimate: OEM argued first in writing, price-matched through OEM vendors second, aftermarket only with customer sign-off — and airbags are always genuine, no exceptions.
- Owner-Retained Salvage (law)
- Keeping your totaled car: the insurer deducts the vehicle’s salvage value from the settlement, pays any lienholder first, and the car stays yours. Whether a brand follows depends on what totaled it — Texas’s salvage definition excludes hail, so a hail-total buyback typically keeps a clean title.
- PDR — Paintless Dent Repair (hail)
- Working dented metal back to its original shape from behind the panel with rods and lights — factory paint untouched, which is the entire value. Published at $50–$150 per dent cash, plus R&I where access requires it. The honest limits: cracked paint, sharp creases, panel edges, and old filler route to conventional repair.
- Pre- & Post-Repair Scan (process)
- Electronic diagnostic sweeps before and after repair — the before-scan catches every fault code the crash set, the after-scan proves the systems woke up clean. Free to you: billed to insurance on covered repairs, on us for estimate-only visits.
- Prompt-Payment Deadlines (law)
- Texas Insurance Code Chapter 542’s clocks on your own carrier: acknowledge and start investigating within 15 days, decide within 15 business days of complete paperwork, pay within 5 business days of a yes — and late payment owes 18% a year plus attorney’s fees. The four clocks, walked through.
- R&I — Remove & Install (process)
- Labor to take a part off and reinstall the same part — a bumper cover off for proper refinish, a headliner down for roof PDR access. Legitimate, necessary work, always itemized as its own line so you can see exactly what it is. A bumper painted on the car shows tape lines; R&I is why ours don’t.
- R&R — Remove & Replace (process)
- Remove the damaged part, replace it with another. The sibling line item to R&I — and the distinction matters on an estimate: R&R carries a part price, R&I is labor only. When they blur, ask which part is actually being bought.
- Rental Reimbursement (coverage)
- Optional coverage paying rental-car costs while your car is repaired — metered by a daily dollar cap and a total cap, which slow repairs can outrun. It’s the coverage DG bills for the loaner when you have it; when you don’t, the loaner is still free. The rental guide covers the third-party version too.
- Salvage Title (law)
- The brand a Texas title takes when a car totals on qualifying damage; returning a branded car to the road requires repair plus the state’s rebuilt process. The quirk worth knowing: the statute’s damage definition excludes hail, so purely hail-totaled cars generally escape the brand — though carriers still report total losses to national databases.
- Spectrophotometer (paint)
- The camera that reads your car’s actual color off the panel — not the code’s theoretical formula, but what a decade of sun did to it. Paint codes name a starting point; the spectrophotometer measures the finish line, and the blend does the rest.
- Steering (claims)
- Insurer pressure toward its own network shops. Recommending is legal; requiring is not — §1952.301 bars conditioning payment on a specific shop, and §1952.302 limits what adjusters may say to push you. The classic scripts and the one-sentence counter live in the shop-choice guide.
- Subrogation (claims)
- Your insurer recovering what it paid on your claim from the party actually at fault. It’s how the file-on-your-own-policy door ends well: §542.204 requires your carrier to pursue your deductible within one year of paying the claim — or refund it to you.
- Supplement (claims)
- The documented addition to an insurance estimate for damage that teardown reveals — hidden brackets, crushed absorbers, bent structure, required calibrations. Routine on moderate-and-above repairs, photographed line by line, and billed to the carrier: your out-of-pocket typically stays your deductible, once.
- Teardown (process)
- Disassembling the damaged area so the estimate prices what’s actually there instead of what’s visible from three feet away. The single biggest difference between an opening insurance number and a complete repair plan — and the reason photo estimates routinely run 20–40% short.
- Third-Party Claim (claims)
- Your claim against the other driver’s liability insurer. No deductible — and no statutory decision deadlines either, because Texas’s prompt-payment clocks bind an insurer only to its own customers. The two-door decision is the whole subject of the not-my-fault guide.
- Total Loss (law)
- Texas’s line: repair cost — counted without repaint materials, labor, or sales tax — reaching 100% of the car’s actual cash value (Transp. Code §501.091(15)). Insurers often make the economic call as repairs approach ACV. Whether hail gets there: the total-loss guide.
- Tri-Coat Paint (paint)
- A three-stage finish: color base, a translucent pearl or tinted mid-coat, then clear. The mid-coat’s depth changes with every pass, which is why pearl whites and candy reds can’t be spot-matched — they demand blend panels, sprayout cards, and more refinish time, honestly priced up front.
- UM / UIM Coverage (coverage)
- Uninsured / Underinsured Motorist coverage — your own policy stepping in when the at-fault driver has no insurance, too little, or vanished. The property-damage side carries a $250 deductible fixed by statute (§1952.105), and hit-and-run UM claims require a police report. Roughly 1 in 8 Texas drivers is uninsured; the guide covers the rest.
- Unibody (structure)
- Modern construction where body and frame are one integrated welded structure — nearly every car and crossover on the road. There’s no separate frame to swap: structural repair means measuring the shell against factory reference points and pulling or replacing sections precisely, some of which are engineered replace-only.
- Warranty, Repair (service)
- No Texas law requires a shop to warranty its work — which makes the written terms everything. DG’s is lifetime on everything except mechanical (mechanical: 1 year / 10,000 miles), fading covered, from the shop that did the work — not a network promise that lives at other shops. How to read any shop’s guarantee.
- Work-Hardening (hail)
- Aluminum’s habit of stiffening where it’s struck — the panel resists the technician the way it resisted the hailstone. It’s why aluminum hail repair runs slower, uses the slow-and-warm technique, prices in the upper half of ranges, and separates technicians who know trucks from tents that don’t.