Payout doesn't work quite like you're thinking. For example, I just had a vehicle declared a total loss in Oct, so I'll explain what happened.
Car was hit while parked on the street in a hit-and-run. I had the police come out and make a report. I contacted our insurance agent. She warned me it might be a total loss. Car had body damage and the front tire was punctured in the side wall. Used insurance free towing to take it to tire place. Two new tires were like $350 (same tires on the vehicle). Took it to the body shop for an estimate. They quoted $2,500. I submitted both the tires and the estimate to insurance company. Insurance alerted me it could be a total loss, and sent out an assessor. Assessor looked at it and asked what I wanted to do--I told him that it seemed driveable, so we'd likely want to keep it. He did his assessment both ways--with us keeping the vehicle and getting rid of it. It broke down approx. like this:
Edited to add KBB value on "good" condition: $1,150
Value of car based on dealer comps within 500 miles: $3,515
Minus deductible: $500
Minus scrap value $215 (he helped me out on this, went with lowest possible scrap value since he knew we wanted to keep)
Check for $3,015 if we turned over the vehicle (value minus deductible), check for $2,800 if we kept the car (value subtracting our deductible AND scrap value)
So a week later we got a check for $2,800. Minus the tires and a mechanic to look it over for any mechanical damage for $45, we came out $2,405 ahead, and still have the car.
You can talk to your insurance company about options and decide whether or not to claim it to the insurance after talking to them. It's not the act of REPORTING an accident to your insurance that would cause your rates to go up, it's an actual CLAIM against the insurance that does that. So start the conversation, get the light fixed, etc. to make it driveable, and see what your options are.
We are probably just going to leave the car as-is, but we did also take it to a local dealer to find out the trade in value. They said they'd still take it as a trade, even with damage, since they can fix the body damage and resell. Trade in estimate on "fair" condition was $500-$1000. So we could eventually trade this in with another bit of money going into our pockets from it. It can't hurt to ask the questions--from your insurance, from a body shop, from a car dealer who takes trades, etc.
And I wholeheartedly disagree that it's not worth it to file a claim--filing a claim in our case meant we got a check for $2,800!