(no subject)
They say that no news is good news, and thus the fact that I haven’t posted in a while must be a good thing. But that’d also imply that since I’m posting today, only badness could’ve happened.
So there I was cruising along I95N just south of the beltway to drive from work to home. And just like I95 often is during rush hour, traffic will all of a sudden stop from the 65ish mph, and the start right back up again a couple seconds later for no good reason. The car in front of me stopped quickly, and so I hit the brakes, coming to a reasonably fast stop. Then I hear the car behind me with their tires screeching as they try to brake. As I brace for impact just in case, I hear a crashing sound shortly before that car impacts with mine. Apparently a third car had hit the black Dodge Neon behind me, causing it to crash into my MINI. Being rather unhappy about being hit, I pulled over to the side of the road about a ways down the road(as there was a lot of traffic and not very much space to pull over since there was construction on I95).
As I was pulled over, I could see nary a trace of any of the other cars involved, and so I called my insurance company to report the accident and to get some advice on what to do. Then I called the police to get them to come and give me a hand. I managed to convince myself to get out of my car with 65+ mph traffic whizzing past to check out the damage to see that most of it seemed cosmetic. After waiting for a bit in the car, a CVS person in a van came up behind me and offered to setup some flares behind me. Apparently CVS has a Good Samaritan program where they have drivers go around and help out people in need on the sides of the roads(and there are plenty of them in the area). A couple minutes later, the state trooper showed up and asked if my car was drivable, and then said that the car who had hit me was a ways back pulled over and was being towed to a parking lot about a mile away. So I drove up there and got introduced into the wonderful world of police reports.
About an hour and a half later of talking with the State Trooper, we managed to reconstruct the scenario to being a bastardly SUV driver hitting the black Neon behind me, and driving off(nowhere to be found). Since it was at night, none of us could give any identifying information other than the stupidly high blinding headlights of an SUV. The Neon behind me had the entire front end collapsed and a bit of damage to the rear, and is probably going to get totaled. My MINI just suffered some bumper damage, and got a rather dented muffler.
Everyone in the two cars that were present didn’t have anything significant in the way of physical injuries. I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that the asshole in the SUV probably didn’t suffer from anything either.
I wound up taking the day off of work to deal with the insurance/doctors/etc. Still need to figure out if I should take vacation, take unpaid leave, or something else. From talking with the insurance people, there’s a fair chunk of repairs that need to be done, and I still have to pay the deductible for it. From my understanding of how these things work, the assholeish thing to do is to get a lawyer to get me more money for this, but it only seems fair that I not have to pay for such things when they clearly aren’t my fault. If the system is setup in a way such that it’s expect that you screw others over to protect yourself, it’s only logical to do so. Medicalwise, I have a lovely textbook case of whiplash, so I’ve got limited movement in my neck for a couple of weeks. Doctor prescribed me some nice drugs, but I think I’ll pass. Never been a big fan of painkillers, esp when it’s pain that only comes when I move in certain ways. Oh well, only time will tell what happens with all this funness.
More photos of the damage
So there I was cruising along I95N just south of the beltway to drive from work to home. And just like I95 often is during rush hour, traffic will all of a sudden stop from the 65ish mph, and the start right back up again a couple seconds later for no good reason. The car in front of me stopped quickly, and so I hit the brakes, coming to a reasonably fast stop. Then I hear the car behind me with their tires screeching as they try to brake. As I brace for impact just in case, I hear a crashing sound shortly before that car impacts with mine. Apparently a third car had hit the black Dodge Neon behind me, causing it to crash into my MINI. Being rather unhappy about being hit, I pulled over to the side of the road about a ways down the road(as there was a lot of traffic and not very much space to pull over since there was construction on I95).
As I was pulled over, I could see nary a trace of any of the other cars involved, and so I called my insurance company to report the accident and to get some advice on what to do. Then I called the police to get them to come and give me a hand. I managed to convince myself to get out of my car with 65+ mph traffic whizzing past to check out the damage to see that most of it seemed cosmetic. After waiting for a bit in the car, a CVS person in a van came up behind me and offered to setup some flares behind me. Apparently CVS has a Good Samaritan program where they have drivers go around and help out people in need on the sides of the roads(and there are plenty of them in the area). A couple minutes later, the state trooper showed up and asked if my car was drivable, and then said that the car who had hit me was a ways back pulled over and was being towed to a parking lot about a mile away. So I drove up there and got introduced into the wonderful world of police reports.
About an hour and a half later of talking with the State Trooper, we managed to reconstruct the scenario to being a bastardly SUV driver hitting the black Neon behind me, and driving off(nowhere to be found). Since it was at night, none of us could give any identifying information other than the stupidly high blinding headlights of an SUV. The Neon behind me had the entire front end collapsed and a bit of damage to the rear, and is probably going to get totaled. My MINI just suffered some bumper damage, and got a rather dented muffler.
Everyone in the two cars that were present didn’t have anything significant in the way of physical injuries. I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that the asshole in the SUV probably didn’t suffer from anything either.
I wound up taking the day off of work to deal with the insurance/doctors/etc. Still need to figure out if I should take vacation, take unpaid leave, or something else. From talking with the insurance people, there’s a fair chunk of repairs that need to be done, and I still have to pay the deductible for it. From my understanding of how these things work, the assholeish thing to do is to get a lawyer to get me more money for this, but it only seems fair that I not have to pay for such things when they clearly aren’t my fault. If the system is setup in a way such that it’s expect that you screw others over to protect yourself, it’s only logical to do so. Medicalwise, I have a lovely textbook case of whiplash, so I’ve got limited movement in my neck for a couple of weeks. Doctor prescribed me some nice drugs, but I think I’ll pass. Never been a big fan of painkillers, esp when it’s pain that only comes when I move in certain ways. Oh well, only time will tell what happens with all this funness.
More photos of the damage