Common Sense and Case by Case

At a 2016 industry panel in Vancouver a representative of one of the large banner programs referred to ‘common sense’ when he said that electronic scanning a vehicle for a scratch on the door was not necessary. This person had limited technical background, but the moderator of the panel did not challenge the comment.  The repair of that scratch using proper paint procedures requires removing the door handle, which means that the trim panel has to be removed and for this a number of electronic components have to be unplugged, possibly including the side airbag. The final step in a correct repair is an electronic systems scan to verify that everything is connected correctly and the main control module has recognized this reconnection.

The next year at another conference an insurance rep was going on at length on the concept of ‘case by case’, which seemed to have taken over from ‘common sense’ as the theme for that year.

Both common sense and case by case are only valid if the person using the concepts has the background knowledge to apply to each case or situation. In the two examples above the people speaking were not qualified to apply either common sense or case by case.

The question may be why they did; and a good guess at the answer is money. The banner program rep was signaling to insurance companies that he was ready work with them to save money and the insurance rep was signaling that they were putting a lot of weight on saving money in repairs and that they would decide on which OEM procedures to work with and which to ignore.