Not the exciting Saturday afternoon I envisioned
I was out and about running some errands this afternoon. On the way to errand #2, I was stopped at a red light on a busy road, waiting to turn left onto the entrance ramp to the highway. If this intersection was a clock, I was at 6, pointing towards 12, waiting to turn to 9. Traffic was coming in from the exit ramp off of the highway (think coming in from 3). Somebody came off of that exit ramp, turning left onto the road I was on-- one of those gigantic pickup trucks with a double cab, a Ford F250 I think, pulling an even more gigantic motor home. (gaius_de_mare informs me that technically this is called a 5th wheel, not a motor home, as it is not self-propelling but has to be towed. Whatever, I am not up on these things.)
In the way that time seems to slow down at these moments, I remember musing idly to myself that the trailer seemed awfully close to my car. And then it seemed closer. And I sort of wondered where the end of this thing was and why there seemed to be yet more of it. They're not going to hit me, I thought. They're not going to hit me...OH FUCKING SHIT THEY'RE GOING TO HIT ME. And indeed, the side of the motor home scraped up against the left front corner of my car for what seemed like forever, and I could hear the sounds of crunching metal and breaking plastic as I let forth a loud stream of obscenities. Then the truck and motor home came to a halt, turn still incomplete, trailer rested up against my car. It was so close that I couldn't even open my door to get out.
A guy in his 40s came walking up to my window. I thought at first that he was from the truck that hit me, but it turned out that he was in the car behind me and had witnessed the accident. He asked if I was okay, and then said it would be better if we got out of the road, and that he'd directed the driver of the pickup to go another block down in the direction they were headed where there was a parking lot to pull over into. He also walked in front of my car and helped me figure out how sharply and far I had to turn so that the trailer could clear the turn, then gave me his name and phone number in case I needed to reach him.
I had to wait for the next left turn arrow, but I got turned around and headed down the road, catching up to the trailer pretty quickly. My car seemed to be running fine. We both turned into an empty church parking lot and got out to assess the situation. The front left corner of my car is scraped and crumpled, but not horribly so-- I doubt there's any frame damage, just some superficial body work. I could barely see anything on the motor home, just a very light scuff mark about 5 feet long, and a very small dent that I thought at first was just part of the molding of the side body.
The driver was an old lady in her 70s from Washington state; she had her husband and 7 year-old grandson with her and it was the first day of their month-long vacation during which they were driving down to California to visit relatives in several places. She admitted fault at once, was very apologetic, and obviously was quite upset about it. A couple times while talking to her, I thought she was going to start crying. I just tried to stay calm and be understanding-- for all my swearing while the accident happened, there wasn't anything to be gained by being an asshole afterwards, even if I wasn't at fault, and the car is still drivable and nobody was hurt. She asked if I wanted to call the police, since she was from out of state. I really had no idea if it was necessary, nor what the local police number was, so I called 911 and was informed that if nobody was injured and it wasn't a hit and run, I didn't need to file a police report unless there was more than $1500 worth of damage. So then we both got on the phones with our respective insurance companies to file claims, and made sure we exchanged information to be able to reach each other. I'll call her insurance company tomorrow, once the claim has had some processing time; I don't really feel like dealing with it anymore today.
So all in all it wasn't that bad, for which I'm glad, but SERIOUSLY. I AM NOT SUPPOSED TO HAVE ANY MORE CAR ACCIDENTS FOR THE NEXT 100 YEARS, OKAY UNIVERSE?!
On the bright side, thanks to the power of free gift card foo (which was my whole purpose in being out running errands), I got 4 meals' worth of takeout from PF Chang's for 15 cents, and a week's worth of groceries from Target for $1.16.
In the way that time seems to slow down at these moments, I remember musing idly to myself that the trailer seemed awfully close to my car. And then it seemed closer. And I sort of wondered where the end of this thing was and why there seemed to be yet more of it. They're not going to hit me, I thought. They're not going to hit me...OH FUCKING SHIT THEY'RE GOING TO HIT ME. And indeed, the side of the motor home scraped up against the left front corner of my car for what seemed like forever, and I could hear the sounds of crunching metal and breaking plastic as I let forth a loud stream of obscenities. Then the truck and motor home came to a halt, turn still incomplete, trailer rested up against my car. It was so close that I couldn't even open my door to get out.
A guy in his 40s came walking up to my window. I thought at first that he was from the truck that hit me, but it turned out that he was in the car behind me and had witnessed the accident. He asked if I was okay, and then said it would be better if we got out of the road, and that he'd directed the driver of the pickup to go another block down in the direction they were headed where there was a parking lot to pull over into. He also walked in front of my car and helped me figure out how sharply and far I had to turn so that the trailer could clear the turn, then gave me his name and phone number in case I needed to reach him.
I had to wait for the next left turn arrow, but I got turned around and headed down the road, catching up to the trailer pretty quickly. My car seemed to be running fine. We both turned into an empty church parking lot and got out to assess the situation. The front left corner of my car is scraped and crumpled, but not horribly so-- I doubt there's any frame damage, just some superficial body work. I could barely see anything on the motor home, just a very light scuff mark about 5 feet long, and a very small dent that I thought at first was just part of the molding of the side body.
The driver was an old lady in her 70s from Washington state; she had her husband and 7 year-old grandson with her and it was the first day of their month-long vacation during which they were driving down to California to visit relatives in several places. She admitted fault at once, was very apologetic, and obviously was quite upset about it. A couple times while talking to her, I thought she was going to start crying. I just tried to stay calm and be understanding-- for all my swearing while the accident happened, there wasn't anything to be gained by being an asshole afterwards, even if I wasn't at fault, and the car is still drivable and nobody was hurt. She asked if I wanted to call the police, since she was from out of state. I really had no idea if it was necessary, nor what the local police number was, so I called 911 and was informed that if nobody was injured and it wasn't a hit and run, I didn't need to file a police report unless there was more than $1500 worth of damage. So then we both got on the phones with our respective insurance companies to file claims, and made sure we exchanged information to be able to reach each other. I'll call her insurance company tomorrow, once the claim has had some processing time; I don't really feel like dealing with it anymore today.
So all in all it wasn't that bad, for which I'm glad, but SERIOUSLY. I AM NOT SUPPOSED TO HAVE ANY MORE CAR ACCIDENTS FOR THE NEXT 100 YEARS, OKAY UNIVERSE?!
On the bright side, thanks to the power of free gift card foo (which was my whole purpose in being out running errands), I got 4 meals' worth of takeout from PF Chang's for 15 cents, and a week's worth of groceries from Target for $1.16.