Mate I've had a panel shop, I've never seen an insurance assessor spend more than a few minutes looking at the car, and when it comes to it they sometimes don't bother coming in they just get you to take some happy snaps to send in with the quote. They have better more cost effective tried and tested ways of not paying you!
Smart arse lawyers, fine print of full of mumbojumbo legalise and bully boy legal threat tactics are their go to.

In the case of fatality it's the accident investigation cops that get involved they will look for the obvious, failing that they might take a closer look if there is no other explanation.
They look for drunk or drugged drivers first, then things like speed,  were the road rules obeyed etc. and other factors like road and weather conditions. They will drag the car back to their lair and check safety items like brakes, steering etc. Whist their at it they will keep an eye out for obvious modifications. and investigate further if they find them.
They will have a fairly well equipped workshop and be reasonably skilled, but when it comes to oddball cars like ours they probably wouldn't know all that much about what is standard fitment, (at least here in Oz the authorities wouldn't have a clue, maybe some of the older blokes in the UK that might've been about when the cars were new, might know something about our cars but most the younger ones wouldn't) but not even the coppers are going to have a Pscan, let alone know what a standard map compared to a remap looks like for our cars.
And the coppers are only interested in the law, so unless they can attribute to modifications a contributing factor in the crash then they aren't going to waste their time and budget doing the dirty on the insurance companies behalf. After all insurance is a civil matter.

In the case mentioned above, the bloke was pissed, that's all the insurance company needed to wiggle their way out of coughing up....and that's all insurance companies want is an easy way out to avoid paying a claim.

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