a lovely start to the day (not)

[cellio]

This morning while I was driving to work someone hit my car. It's a minor fender-bender (probably just paint in my case), and the other driver admitted responsibility immediately. So while annoying, this should have been a five-minute stop for exchange of information, followed by her paying my repair bill.

But no... I had to draw someone who's never been in an accident before. She totally freaked.

I feel bad for the lady; the timing really does suck from her point of view. She got married on Saturday, she just graduated college, and she was on her way to a job interview. I initially told her "look, we can do this quickly and you won't be late for your interview", but she called to cancel it -- which turned out to be the right call given how completely she fell apart afterwards.

So instead, it took me more than half an hour to complete the exchange of information and try to calm her down. (Part of this time was consumed by a search for the contact lens she cried out of her eye.) She insisted that you're supposed to call the police when there's an accident; I said they don't care if all cars can be driven away and no one was hurt ('cause I made that assumption once upon a time too), but she called anyway. I gave her a business card and told her to call if the police wanted to talk with me, and then asked if I could go to work while she waited for the police. (This was on Carson Street, so I can just walk out there in the unlikely event that they want to talk with me.)

She is also very upset at the driver of another car, the (in her opinion) proximate cause of the accident. There was a disabled car on Carson -- no blinkers, no flares -- and other traffic pulled up behind that car, then realized it wasn't going anywhere and had to pull around. The person who hit me was backing up in preparation to go around. I wish her luck in pleading that case to the police (she was livid that they should "do something" to that driver), but I don't think the driver of a disabled vehicle is likely to be charged in an accident that doesn't even involve that vehicle, even though that driver should have been more pro-active (like standing behind the car and waving traffic around). You've got to pay attention to the other traffic, especially when doing non-standard maneuvers like backing up on a busy street. She's lucky that she learned this lesson for, probably, less than $200.

Now the trick is finding time to take the car to a body shop (or VW dealer other than the one where I bought it).

Comments

[chaiya.livejournal.com]

Sounds like the girl just couldn't pull it together. You did get all her info, right? The last time I got into a small accident with a clueless person, I had to call her insurance because she never let them know she'd been in an accident and she wouldn't call me back to tell me what she wanted to do about it. :(

[cellio]

I got all her information, yes. So if she spaces on me I can call her insurance company directly, but I hope it doesn't come to that and she'll just pay the bill. She was worried about the effect on her insurance rates, and I said several times that the damage was probably below her deductable and if she just pays the bill there's no need to even involve her insurance company. With luck that will be a motivator. Insurance is for the big stuff, not for minor bumps and scrapes, and they don't want to process the paperwork any more than she wants to pay higher rates.

[cellio]

Your comment reminds me of an accident I was involved in some years ago. (I was a pedestrian, not a driver.) The person who hit me had sped through a red light, and this generated a police report and a hospital visit. Some days later I called her insurance company to talk about my claim. (The hospital visit was covered by my own health insurance, but I had other damages resulting from this.) Not only had the driver not told her insurance company about the accident, but she had been in another accident six weeks earlier. (I gave her name and policy number and they asked "is this about the accident on [date]?", which wasn't my date.) Talk about clueless! (She also had two small children in the car during "my" accident, and as I said she ran a red light, so failure to report was not her only clue deficiency.)

[cahwyguy.livejournal.com]

She insisted that you're supposed to call the police when there's an accident; I said they don't care if all cars can be driven away and no one was hurt ('cause I made that assumption once upon a time too), but she called anyway. I gave her a business card and told her to call if the police wanted to talk with me, and then asked if I could go to work while she waited for the police. (This was on Carson Street, so I can just walk out there in the unlikely event that they want to talk with me.)

Alas, you're wrong, at least if you were in California. According to the California DMV (http://www.dmv.ca.gov/forms/sr/sr1.htm), if you are involved in a vehicle accident that occurred in California, you must report it to DMV if (a) there was property damage of more than $750 ($500 for accidents prior to January 1, 2003) or (b) Anyone was injured (no matter how minor) or (c) Anyone was killed.

In Pennsylvania, you are sort of right. According to the Philadephia PD (http://www.ppdonline.org/ppd3_autoaccinfo.htm), an accident is considered reportable by law if it meets any one of the following three conditions: (a) One of the involved vehicles cannot be driven from the scene of the collision under it's own power, except in cases where a flat tire alone has disabled the auto; (b) An occupant of one of the vehicles or involved person has sustained an injury of any kind, no matter how slight; (c) The accident resulted in a fatality. They noted that if an accident is not considered reportable, a police accident report is not required by law. Nevertheless, many motorists prefer to report the accident to facilitate insurance claims and other proceedings.

Just FYI.

[cellio]

According to the Philadephia PD, an accident is considered reportable by law if [...]

This is pretty much what the police I insisted on calling for something like this, years ago, told me. (I hadn't thought or heard of the flat-tire exception, but it makes sense.) In this case no one was hurt and both cars were scuffed but not even (so far as I could tell) dented. I'm pretty sure the cost of repair will be less than her deductable.

Nevertheless, many motorists prefer to report the accident to facilitate insurance claims and other proceedings.

That makes sense.

[murmur311.livejournal.com]

You haven't had the best of luck with that car, have you? I hope that this is the end of troubles for this car. It'd be nice if you got it all out of the way in the first few months...

[tangerinpenguin.livejournal.com]

Oww. I was dented once by someone pulling out of on-street parking into the side of my minivan, and she was pretty rattled, too, although it sounds like she handled it a lot better. Sometimes it's just a matter of living through your first accident and seeing that life goes on.

Besides, you're both doing better than the guy I saw sail through a red light to broadside someone else, who was driving one of the pickups from work at the time. ("Ohmygod, this is my job, I'm gonna lose my job for this...") and even he's doing a lot better than he would have ten or twenty years ago (the "side-impact crumple zones" on the car that got hit were, for an engineer, a thing of absolute beauty to watch - the driver, after a moment to catch his breath and dig out from the airbag, opened the crushed driver-side door and climbed out with no apparent injuries.)

[anniemal.livejournal.com]

I'm going with the "This Car's Aura Draws Trouble" theory. Ditch it. Not literally.

[anniemal.livejournal.com]

Have you considered a Saturn? I loved mine. Nice service people. Mostly not stupid (We'll excuse the loose engine mount.) Find the right dealer, and you're set. But that could hold for VW's too.

[ichur72.livejournal.com]

>> (Part of this time was consumed by a search for the contact lens she cried out of her eye.)

Ah, memories ... nearly three years ago I was running an errand of some urgency, and as I was waiting for the person I was supposed to pick up, one of my contacts decided it was time to take a flying leap out of my eye for no reason. Scrabbling around in the gravel of a parking lot (in the rain) yielded no results -- that lens was gone. My passenger finally showed up after a longer-than-expected wait, and then on the way back my one remaining contact decided to slip out of place. (Luckily, this happened *before* I got on the highway.) I pulled over to move it back into place, and it popped out. We had a nervous few minutes looking for it, but it finally turned up. What a relief -- I was already nervous about driving with one contact, but to be without both of them would have incapacitated me.

In any case, sorry to hear you've had more trouble with this car. Hopefully it'll be fixed quickly.

[cellio]

My husband has a Saturn. It's five years old and has had more than one mysterious failure this year. This does not imbue me with warm fuzzy feelings about the quality of worksmanship.

Alas, they also do not yet make a hatchback.

[cellio]

And this one isn't even VW's fault! I strongly suspect that there will be more VW-originated grief in my life before this is over. :-(

[cellio]

My first accident involved black ice at night on I-80. I was pretty rattled, but I think I had more justification. :-) (Miraculously, and I do not use the term lightly, the net damage after the spin-out was one headlight and a realignment. I don't think I was really a good-enough driver at the time to pull that off on skill alone.) My rattled-ness also manifested as extreme reluctance to get back in the car and drive away, not as bawling.

the driver, after a moment to catch his breath and dig out from the airbag, opened the crushed driver-side door and climbed out with no apparent injuries

Wow, that's impressive!

[cellio]

You have a point there. This car attracts trouble. (Cue "Twilight Zone" music.)

[cellio]

Yikes. The contacts just flew out without provocation? I didn't know they could do that. I'm glad it didn't happen while you were driving!

(I guess one advantage of glasses is that failure involves breakage, not loss, most of the time -- so if I had to I could probably find something to use to tape them back together long enough to get home. My lenses are way too thick to shatter under conditions that would result in me remaining conscious, by the way.)

[anniemal.livejournal.com]

Aah. I had the wagon, because the dog was ageing. Sort of an easy-loading hatchback. But the fools no longer make that, either. I'm sorry yours isn't being the reliable workhorse mine was. She ran well and reliably. With a sample of one, I guess not valid. But it always worked for me. Just a thought. Mine was 9. But we had a sort of automotive/human relationship from the start.

Best of luck.

[cellio]

Well, we also only have the one data point. If they had a model that appealed to me then I would have looked into what Consumer Reports and Edmunds had to say about them when I was shopping, but since they don't it didn't come up. Oh well.

[anniemal.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Somewhere in my files is an explicit list of needs and wants. Saturn ain't doin' it for me right now. No one is. But I want wing windows and foot vents.

[ichur72.livejournal.com]

Yep, without provocation. This has happened to me several times with hard and gas-permeable contact lenses, and I have yet to figure out why. It never happened with soft lenses ...

[aliza250.livejournal.com]

I've got a worse story: I had a teeny accident on the Beltway (I scratched the paint on the car bumper ahead of me in stop-and-go traffic), and the driver of the other car insisted that we not move either car until the police showed up!

Luckily, after 5 minutes I was able to convince her to move to the shoulder...

BTW, the minor oops will cost her a lot more than $200 - if she goes through her insurance company, she'll have higher rates for, probably, the next 5 years...

[cellio]

BTW, the minor oops will cost her a lot more than $200 - if she goes through her insurance company, she'll have higher rates for, probably, the next 5 years...

Yes. I told her several times that if the damage is less than her deductable she shouldn't even involve her insurance company. She asked if I was going to call her company and I said I only care about getting my car fixed so no, if she pays the bill I have absolutely no reason to call them. I hope it sunk in.

Hey, it could have been worse...

[alienor.livejournal.com]

Here's a newspaper quote from a recent accident in this area:

A stalled Ford Escort, its hazard lights blinking, had been abandoned in the left lane of northbound traffic by a woman who walked to a nearby gas station for help, authorities and witnesses said. Just before 5 a.m., a taxicab, driven by Margaret B. Eyombo, 53, of Waldorf, came up behind the Escort, swerved left across the grass median strip and crashed into a dump truck traveling south, authorities said. The dump truck careered across the median, colliding with a catering truck and a Buick sedan. Long crashed into the catering truck as it spun around into the center lane.

Propane tanks on the catering truck burst into flames, authorities and witnesses said, followed by an explosion of two saddle tanks of diesel fuel on the dump truck.

It Was Very, Very Bad (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49286-2004Sep25.html)


Three people died and two were injured; it was just a horrific accident. One of those, "if it could have gone wrong, it did". Yuck.

[paquerette.livejournal.com]

However, most of the time the police will not come out for a non-reportable accident, and even if you get one there, they usually won't make a report.

[eub.livejournal.com]

My high-water mark in this, and I hope never to top it, was when I was backed into by a guy kept saying he'd just had brain surgery, wanted me to follow him to his brother's place where the insurance information was, but was in Virginia and thought he was in New Hampshire, and turned out to have been involved in at least one other accident that same day. I was the last that day, anyway.

[goljerp]

Well, there was the one time when I was young, and I thought it would be fun to wear my glasses while swimming... and then started playing the game of "let the glasses fall to the bottom of the pool, and pick 'em up. I think I did so with my feet a few times...

I didn't really notice anything at first, because of course it's hard to see anything with them when they're wet...

but just in case you were wondering, concrete ranks above glass on Moh's hardness scale. :-)

[cellio]

Ouch! How did you finally get his insurance information? I think I would have made a police report and said "he could not show me proof of insurance" and let them deal with it... (That's why I carry uninsured-motorist protection on my own policy, after all.)

Re: Hey, it could have been worse...

[cellio]

Ugh. That's pretty horrific, yes!

Re: Hey, it could have been worse...

[cellio]

I just read the full article. In the "life is really unfair" department, I see that the taxi driver who made the original error survived, while three drivers who did nothing wrong got killed. How sad.

[eub.livejournal.com]

He did have ID. I forget if the cop (apparently they're willing to come out for a non-injury accident that's weird enough) looked it up from that somehow, or what.