If you miss the wrong deadline, your claim can die even if the other driver was clearly at fault.

What should have happened first: after a Coeur d'Alene crash, the insurer should open the claim, inspect damage, and request records. That does not stop the legal clock. In Idaho, the usual deadline to sue for personal injury is 2 years from the injury date under Idaho Code § 5-219. If a city, county, or other government vehicle was involved, the trap is worse: an Idaho Tort Claims Act notice usually must be served within 180 days. Waiting for an adjuster to "finish reviewing" can burn that deadline.

What to do now: assume delay is strategy, not paperwork. Get the crash report from the responding agency, often the Coeur d'Alene Police Department or Idaho State Police for highway wrecks. Confirm the exact crash date, every vehicle owner, and whether any public entity was involved. Preserve photos, witness names, and medical records now. In summer tourist traffic around Kootenai County's fast-growing two-lane roads, video disappears fast and skid marks do not last.

If you are a veteran, do not assume VA treatment records automatically reach the insurer or prove your whole claim. VA benefits and a civilian injury claim are separate systems. The insurer may stall while telling you it is "waiting on the VA," because those records can take time and the statute keeps running anyway.

What comes next: once the records are in, the adjuster may start arguing you were partly to blame. Idaho uses modified comparative fault with a 50% bar. If they can push you to 50% or more at fault, you recover nothing. That is why stalling matters: it gives them time to build a blame-shifting story while your evidence gets weaker.

If the injury happened on the job, there may be a separate workers' compensation timeline too, including prompt notice to the employer. Different clock, same trap.