Closing out the Year with A Car Accident

So that happened.

I was in a hurry. This shopping center was near an intersection with a red light. People often think they are going to turn left out of the shopping center and end up changing their minds and turning right out of desperation when they discover the traffic never stops coming, despite the light. (There's an "always right yield" lane that contributes to this.)

I know all this. But I was in a hurry. So I pulled up next to the Toyota Highlander planning to turn left, since I was planning to turn right to go home. The Highlander changes his mind and turns right anyway. Without looking.

My car didn't stand a chance.

Luckily, it was low-speed, and my bumper absorbed all the force just like it is supposed to. In fact, I thought I'd just have a scrape when I got out to look, from the sound of it, since I hadn't felt a bit of shudder or shake inside the car.

Nope. There'd been more force than that, and the entire corner was staved in. 

Even more luckily, the Toyota Highlander driver was a very nice young man who took responsibility for it (instead of trying to "hedge" his way out) and did so on the phone with his insurance company. He had asked me if I thought we should call the police, and, not really wanting to for something this minor, I replied that perhaps we should call our insurance companies and ask them if they wanted us to in order to have a police report. (No, we didn't have to call the police out. Whew.)

We both dutifully took pictures of our cars--his truly was nothing but paint scrapes and he said he had a friend who'd take care of his car for him--and each other's licenses and insurance cards (hey, it's easier than trying to find something to write all the info down on).

His car got scraped a little.

His insurance company fixed my car at a body shop that's five minutes from where I work--coincidence, not their doing on purpose. It was a huge body shop and I was very impressed. They used the same bumper, just took it off my car and reshaped it back again and repainted it. They unfortunately for me didn't repaint the entire bumper, just that part, and blended the paint into the rest of it. 

It would have been nice to get a free repaint of the circle I'd put on it the first year I'd got it, on the other side!

This all happened over Christmas--they took my car on the 23rd and gave it back on the Monday after Christmas. They put me in a white Chrysler 300 for a rental, and while it was obvious this was supposed to be an "upper part of the line" car (probably not top of the line), that car sucked. The sight lines were horrible. I could barely back up; I couldn't tell where the front of the car ended or where the back ended ... someone told me Chryslers are notorious for this. I know what kind of car I'm not buying next.

The Thursday after I got it back, the lovely warm unseasonable weather we'd had over Christmas finally snapped, and it went cold fast. The headlight on that side suddenly accumulated a great deal of condensation inside it. 

That had never happened before. The other headlight didn't do that. So I figured we're talking microscopic fracture that let water in but was not easily seen. I called the insurance rep at the shop.

They did not argue with me. They did not try to make it "caused by wear and tear". They didn't do anything like that. They just said bring it in; they looked at it, said, "we'll fix it" and sent me away till they had the part (they had to order it). Then they fixed it after work on Wednesday while I waited in the shop. Took less than an hour.

Well, I gotta say, I'm impressed. The whole thing was much less trouble than I thought it was going to be. And after having my car banged up and dented twice in one year, I'm kind of getting used to dealing with insurance companies and I think I'm getting the hang of this.