How to assess the damages?

Someone was driving a car without insurance and hit another vehicle. How much does he have to pay in damages? Does he have to pay the sum that an insurance company appraiser would have named (had there been an insurance), or the sum that it actually costs to fix the car? And what if the owner of the car that sustained the damage doesn’t want to fix it at all, he just wants to receive the damages in cash?  

If the car was insured, then getting paid by the insurance company more than it actually costs to fix the car is not problematic at all, since when you buy an insurance, you pay for that extra cash as well. But if there is no insurance, then the obligation to pay for the damages follows the Torah laws of damages, and has nothing to do with how much insurance companies pay in such cases. Therefore, if the owner of the car that sustained the damage wants to fix it, the guilty party has to pay for the repair. He doesn’t have to pay for new parts, since, when he damaged the car, it didn’t have new parts, and he only damaged old parts (this is unlike insurance companies, which pay for new parts). He only has to pay for used parts in good working condition, according to the true value of the damage, that is, if the car was ten years old, he has to pay for ten-year-old parts.

If the owner doesn’t want to repair the car, and this damage is something that many people don’t fix, then he doesn’t have the right to demand payment for it. This is again unlike an insurance company, which would send him a check for the damage anyway. But here, since this is something that is not going to be repaired, the one who damaged it doesn’t have to pay for fixing it, unless it depreciates the market value of the car.

Shulchan Oruch, section Choshen Mishpat, chapter 387