LOL! The Dog Chariot came out unscathed this morning from a Close Encounter of the Airhead Kind.
I’m sitting in line at a red light, heading east toward the 7:00 a.m. meeting of the Scottsdale Business Association, when I’m rudely awakened from the morning’s daydream by a whack and a billiard-ball zing forward followed by a slam on the back of the head.
Rear-ended in the middle lane.
So, deeply depressed, both drivers crawl out of the traffic and park on a residential side-street. We clamber out of our cars to inspect the damage our insurance companies will soon be frowning upon.
Mercifully, neither car was damaged. The Dog Chariot had not so much as a scratch on its much-weathered, once black now gun-metal gray bumper. The Perp’s car had a tiny scrape that clearly would polish off.
I should have had my wits about me. Darn it…I never think of the good stuff until it’s too late.
What should come trepidatiously out of the other car but a very pretty, very sharply dressed young woman, a creature in her early 20s or maybe even very late teens. She is dressed to the nines: her makeup is impeccable, her hair glows under the gilded ministrations of its owner and its owner’s stylist, her clothes are adorable. She is, in short, a very lovely young woman with manners to match.
A perfect mother of my grandchildren.
Here’s what I mean about having my wits about me: I should’ve said, “O.K., I’m not calling my insurance company, but only if you’ll go out to dinner with the cutest young man in the world.” And then fixed them up.
Heh heh heh heh heh!
Well, it was lucky, very lucky. She must have been playing with her phone as she was slowing to a stop. Neither car’s airbags deployed and we were both OK. Given the way people drive around this place (a moron passed me on the right this morning; two others shot by me at 65 mph in a 45 mph zone where I was driving 55; and another wove back and forth, speeding to 50 and then dropping to around 35 as he yakked on the phone), a fender-bender in which no fenders get bent is a variety of miracle.
One of my SBA friends remarked that I should’ve nabbed the kid’s insurance information anyway, because even though I felt fine after the bump, ooooohhhhhhh god! Whiplash pain could appear as much as two days later!
Naturally, that made my neck hurt, my head ache, and my back start to clench up. The fact that my neck already hurt and I woke up with a headache did little to persuade me of anything other than that these were the early symptoms of terminal, nonreimbursable WHIPLASH!
Eeek.
M’hijito, who works as an automobile insurance adjustor, says many people stumble out of their cars after minor incidents like this grasping their necks and claiming unbearable anguish. It is, he says, impossible to prove they’re not hurt, since muscle injury doesn’t show up on X-rays, and so they stand to collect stupid amounts of money for “pain and suffering” from the Perp’s insurance company. Alas, I’m not that good in the acting department. Nor do I think fast enough to be convincing.
After a glass of my favorite analgesic (Sangiovese), all signs of crippling injury seem to have disappeared, though. So I guess I’m not kilt.
And I feel very fortunate, as I do every time I arrive safely at a destination around this place, to have ventured out and returned unscathed.
As for you? Would you have made a claim against the child’s insurance company, for as little or as much as you could get?
😉
If I were actually injured? Yes.
Otherwise, of course not. I was bumped like that several times while living in Anchorage — other driver hit ice and just couldn’t stop. I don’t consider a teeny little dent/scratch on my back bumper worth fixing, so I settled it with a “Glad neither of us was hurt. See ya!”
(A few other accidents did require insurance getting involved. Two to fix my car, one to fix my car *and* me.)
Coincidentally, I happened to write about that very subject this week over at MSN Money: “Secrets of car insurance adjusters.” The point was that not all adjusters are a bunch of crooks but that consumers should know their rights. To hear the howls from adjusters who commented, you’d think I’d printed a primer on How To Cheat The Other Guy’s Insurance Company. Sigh.
You never know about this stuff.
If someone bumped into me:
I’d get information and contact my insurance company just in case.
She could have broken a nail or something and is in distress from emotional damage.
There are too many lawyers out there chomping at their bit.
Yeah; I had her license number but now can’t find it.
She was just so relieved that no damage was done that I doubt she’ll try any shenanigans. She looked young enough that a) the car could very well be her parents’; and b) a ding on her record could jack up already exorbitant insurance rates into the unaffordable range.