I'm going to try to shed some light on this at least in terms of time frames. In a past life I was an underwriter and had to deal with this stuff on a daily basis. That accident, being an at fault loss, (You were the only person involved so it's at fault), at the $1001 mark and up will impact you. This typically gives you 5 insurance surcharge points, not to be confused with MVC points. Most companies will use this loss against you for your direct rate for a period of 36 months, and can impact your tiering for a period of 5 years. There's a multitude of factors associated with tiering such as homeownership, credit score, losses over a span of time etc. So hopefully that makes a bit more sense.
Completely agree with this statement. Having worked on the inside of one, and my wife currently works for another, this is the biggest racket ever.