January Car Bidness
Just about a year ago, I was blogging about my car being stolen.
Well, it seems like January is the month for car incidents.
Last Saturday, the wife and I had a date night in Greenwood. Our plans were to go to the Home Depot to look at some closet doors, then over to the mall, and follow up with dinner at the Stone Creek Lodge (a coworker had gotten my a gift card for there).
All was well until we got onto Madison avenue heading south towards the mall. This particular stretch of road is double lane on each side, with a suicide lane in the middle. We were in the rightmost lane, southbound.
As we were driving, an old lady in an almost-as-old car made a left hand turn onto Madison in the same direction we were going. However, instead of turning into and staying in the left lane, she made a much wider turn and just kind of veered on over into our lane, sideswiping us in the process.
The initial reaction was a bit of shock, much like any time you get hit. She kept on driving, mildly oblivious to what had just happened. I mentally memorized her license plate number, just in case she drove off.
Then I hopped out of the car (the wife was driving) and got out to pick up the pieces. The driver’s side mirror was on the road, along with some plastic pieces. The car otherwise looked to be in fine shape. Up ahead, the old lady had turned off into a Wendys, about two or three blocks up. So we pulled up to find her.
As we started to pull in, she pulled out and went back to the scene of the accident, oblivious to the fact that we had just pulled in to the Wendys to find her. She drove back to the scene, turned around again, and came back to the Wendys after she saw us standing there in the cold. Since it was a billionty degrees below 0 out, it was pretty obvious we must have been the people involved in the accident.
She got out of her car and I instantly realized that not only was she really old (and quite honestly had no business driving) but she also had no idea what had happened. Since the damage was pretty minor, the car was drivable, and it was frigid, we just wrote all of the information down and gave it to her (keeping her information for us) so we could be on our way.
And the rest of the day we tried to enjoy ourselves. The wife was a bit shaken up for a while, but that’s to be expected whenever that kind of thing happens.
On Monday the wife called our insurance to report the accident. Since it was MLK day, they were closed so we would have to wait until Tuesday for a response.
Tuesday came and all of the normal calls were done. I’ll let Annie follow this up with the details, but it’s always a mess trying to deal with these folks.
The long and short of it is: our insurance won’t do anything since it was the other person’s fault (per our story). We have to do everything through HER insurance (Allstate). If they don’t do things to our satisfaction ,then we can open a claim with our own insurance, and they can go after Allstate for damage.
Very inefficient, but that’s the way it goes I guess.
It took a few more days to get things sorted out. They didn’t even contact the lady until Thursday to get her story. I know this is a slow process, but the wife is driving around without a driver’s side rear view mirror, which is extremely difficult if you’ve never tried it. Try merging into the left lane sometime without a mirror at night.
On Friday I had to drive her car to work, then take it to the local Allstate office where they would do an estimate of damages. We got our own estimate from the body shop earlier in the week: $1700 (mostly for paint. WOW. I had no idea it was going to be that much.)
So here we are today, with the car finally at the body shop and the rental Corolla in the spot where the Grand Prix normally sits. We are lucky the lady’s story corroborated with ours. I realize now that in leaving the scene to go find this lady we didn’t really pay attention to if there were witnesses, and that really would have been necessary had this lady told a different story. Also, both insurance companies were really shocked we didn’t have a police report. I was kind of under the impression that they weren’t necessary for “minor” damage, but I suppose in the future I’ll make sure that we just call the police no matter what.
Anyway, a few pics for you for reading this far:
January 29th, 2008 at 7:51 am
I’m pretty sure the law is a police report must be filed if damages exceed $400 (at least, that’s what the limit used to be). Given body shop rates, $400 would probably be the cost of a bird shat on your car, so there you have it.
January 29th, 2008 at 8:20 am
Late Tuesday morning, I got a call back from my claims adjuster. She took all of the information and then said she would call me back. The claims adjuster ended up calling Allstate (the other lady’s insurance) and starting a claim. Later Tuesday, I receive a call from Allstate asking by name for the claims adjuster. I explained that I was the one in the accident and the person he asked for was the claims adjuster. The Allstate claims adjuster asked for my version of the story but before I could finish, he asked if there was a bicycle involved - there was not by the way - I wasn’t able to finish my conversation with the claims adjuster because I was out of the office and I didn’t have all of the details. The claims adjuster was suppose to call me back in five minutes but never did.
Wednesday, I called the Allstate claims adjuster. Unfortunately, the claims adjuster was out of the office. However, I did talk to another Allstate employee and she said the claim had been setup incorrectly. I also called the claims adjuster from my insurance company; she said she wouldn’t be able to help me unless I decided to go ahead with the claim on my insurance and then my insurance would then deal with Allstate.
Thursday, there was another call to the Allstate claims adjuster. The new claim setup still hadn’t been completed so I had to wait until later in the afternoon to learn anything. Late Thursday afternoon, I finally had a new claim number and Allstate had finally contacted their client; unfortunately, the contact was in the form of a message on her answering machine. But I was able to make an appointment for Allstate to write up an estimate for the damages.
Friday morning, just before Caleb took the car to the estimate appointment, the Allstate claims adjuster told me they would settle.
What a hassle!
January 29th, 2008 at 8:24 am
I was actually going to call law enforcement but Caleb didn’t seem to think it was necessary. He was under the assumption the you were suppose to get law enforcement involved if you suspect the damages are more than $700.
But I’ve learned my lesson…always call law enforcement and let them decided if they can/will come to the scene of the accident.
January 30th, 2008 at 10:19 am
we had a similar accident while back in california a few months back, some lady in a lexus merged into my wife. Unfortunately, unless there is injury or disabled vehicles involved, the police don’t care and it is up to you and insurance in that state, so they pulled over and swapped insurance, the lady being all apologetic and “oh, I had my turn signal on”.
When it came time to get both sides of the story, my wife’s words were along the lines of “I was just driving along and felt a hit..”, and the lexus lady came up with a similar story leaving out the part about the turn signal and such, so it was called as no-fault and not covered by her insurance. What a crock.
Glad to be back in a state where we can call the cops on fender benders..
January 31st, 2008 at 1:04 pm
I’d like to badmouth the no-fault policy that a lot of states have, but it saved my ass when I totaled my truck (and another vehicle) in Kentucky. Though I wont admit it outright, I’d say that most judges would conclude that the accident was my fault.
February 1st, 2008 at 10:38 am
the only thing that no-fault laws do is raise insurance prices for everyone….
February 12th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Did you guys know your garage door is open? Should I shut it?