Accident
Like I need another thing to worry about.
The first year we were in our new house I was planning a lovely Thanksgiving dinner. My mom was coming up from Portland. The night before I had Homegrocer.com (oh Homegrocer, how I miss you!) scheduled to deliver everything from food to flowers for the big event. I was on my way from my job in the U District down to Renton to pick up Chris and Kate and head back home. Traffic was terrible, stop and go and backed up in every lane as people fled town for the holiday. I was completely stopped in traffic when I was rear-ended. A motorcycle cop in our lane a couple of cars back sped to the scene. The non-English speaker whose child was not in a car seat was frantic that we call an ambulance to check out his child, who had a bump on the head. The guy in the middle of the accident sandwich had no insurance. I had a crack in my bumper but would have been perfectly happy to just suck it up and go on my way had the police not already been on the scene and insisting on sorting the mess out. Bleh.
Tonight, I hadn't even made it to the downtown exits when I once again hit heavy traffic. I was in the far left lane, inching my way toward the exit for the express lanes when BAM I was rear-ended again. It wasn't nearly as bad as last time. In fact, there's barely a scratch on the car! If it had been my own car, I would have happily gone on my merry way, no harm done. But no... I was driving the Flexcar so I had to call in and see what they needed me to do. I explained that I had been "bumped" and that there was a scratch on the bumper... it's not totally undamaged but it's definitely about as minor as you can get. They insisted that I had to call 911 and report the accident, fill out double accident reports, all while I'm stopped half in the express lanes with people driving by and yelling out their windows cursing me (and the other driver). Lovely.
I've never had any kind of accident with the Flexcar before. I was seriously doing NOTHING wrong: I couldn't have avoided this accident in any way other than by not being on the road at all. I didn't make a sudden stop or anything like that... the woman who hit me was looking behind her and rolled into me. Unfortunately, I don't know what Flexcar will decide to do about it... it's possible that we could get hit with a $500 deductible on getting the bumper scratches repaired, which seems like a lot but the particular Flexcar I was driving is a brand new Honda hybrid with barely 9000 miles on it and I can easily imagine parts on that baby not coming cheap.
Very very glad it wasn't worse, that no one was hurt and that we weren't driving the PIF. (Aside: I'm toying with dubbing the car PIFfany. I've never been the sort to name my cars but I haven't been able to dislodge the idea from my head since it planted itself there...) Fingers crossed that Flexcar will decide the minor scratch is no biggie and I don't have to worry about it.
The first year we were in our new house I was planning a lovely Thanksgiving dinner. My mom was coming up from Portland. The night before I had Homegrocer.com (oh Homegrocer, how I miss you!) scheduled to deliver everything from food to flowers for the big event. I was on my way from my job in the U District down to Renton to pick up Chris and Kate and head back home. Traffic was terrible, stop and go and backed up in every lane as people fled town for the holiday. I was completely stopped in traffic when I was rear-ended. A motorcycle cop in our lane a couple of cars back sped to the scene. The non-English speaker whose child was not in a car seat was frantic that we call an ambulance to check out his child, who had a bump on the head. The guy in the middle of the accident sandwich had no insurance. I had a crack in my bumper but would have been perfectly happy to just suck it up and go on my way had the police not already been on the scene and insisting on sorting the mess out. Bleh.
Tonight, I hadn't even made it to the downtown exits when I once again hit heavy traffic. I was in the far left lane, inching my way toward the exit for the express lanes when BAM I was rear-ended again. It wasn't nearly as bad as last time. In fact, there's barely a scratch on the car! If it had been my own car, I would have happily gone on my merry way, no harm done. But no... I was driving the Flexcar so I had to call in and see what they needed me to do. I explained that I had been "bumped" and that there was a scratch on the bumper... it's not totally undamaged but it's definitely about as minor as you can get. They insisted that I had to call 911 and report the accident, fill out double accident reports, all while I'm stopped half in the express lanes with people driving by and yelling out their windows cursing me (and the other driver). Lovely.
I've never had any kind of accident with the Flexcar before. I was seriously doing NOTHING wrong: I couldn't have avoided this accident in any way other than by not being on the road at all. I didn't make a sudden stop or anything like that... the woman who hit me was looking behind her and rolled into me. Unfortunately, I don't know what Flexcar will decide to do about it... it's possible that we could get hit with a $500 deductible on getting the bumper scratches repaired, which seems like a lot but the particular Flexcar I was driving is a brand new Honda hybrid with barely 9000 miles on it and I can easily imagine parts on that baby not coming cheap.
Very very glad it wasn't worse, that no one was hurt and that we weren't driving the PIF. (Aside: I'm toying with dubbing the car PIFfany. I've never been the sort to name my cars but I haven't been able to dislodge the idea from my head since it planted itself there...) Fingers crossed that Flexcar will decide the minor scratch is no biggie and I don't have to worry about it.
