On Friday afternoon around 4pm, I planned to take kids to Costco and on the way I'd drop by library to return/borrow books. When I was approaching the traffic light at Stonecrest, the light turned green and the car line were moving slowly but then stopped again due to the traffic jam so I hit the brake to slow down the car. All of sudden I felt the force from behind pushing my car into the car in the front and all I heard was two loud bang sound before I realized what happened. I got hit by the car behind me causing me hit the car in the front!
Lesson learned: Avoid the rush hour. Don't go out unless you have to. The more traffic, the more accidents. Don't ever take your eyes off the road, even just a split second.
I was in shock at that moment. The driver behind me got out of the car to talked to me and the driver in the front, he politely apologized. We all pulled over to the parking lot around the corner. The driver of the front car was a tall guy in his sixties. He had two dogs in the car too. Somehow he didn't think it's needed to call the police. I wasn't quite sure so I called my husband and he suggested me always call police to file the report. So the gentleman (the driver at fault) called police. (I learned here that if no injury occur and the accident happened in the rush hour, you might have to wait 2 hours to get the Police come). Fortunately, it only took about 20 mins for police to come. While waiting for the police to come, the driver at fault showed us his insurance card, so I took the picture with my iPhone. Later I learned I should gather their phone numbers too.
Police asked some information and handed each of us the accident report. The driver in front actually drove someone else's car. (Maybe that's why he didn't want to call police?)
The policeman noticed the fluid was leaking out from the front of my car and he told me I need a towing service. I didn't expect it was that bad that I couldn't drive my mini-van any more. I called my insurance company, they helped me locate the towing service near me. The driver at fault was a nice guy. He stayed there with me until my husband came. Turned out his car also needed to be towed. The old guy in the front car left, his car had the least damage so he still could drive his car.
After the mini-van was towed, we decided to get the rental car right away. We went to airport to rent a car from Hertz. Later on I learned if you call insurance company first, they will arrange the rental car for you and you don't need to pay it out of your pocket and reimburse later.
The mini-van was towed to Honda dealer, the 2nd day they called and asked if they can start the repair. My DH asked them to wait for the adjuster. The mini-van was 10 years old, so we didn't carry the collision liability. That means we have to deal with the other car's insurance company ourselves. It was a pain in the ass. It turned out our car was total so we have to negotiate how much the other car's insurance company will have to pay. The negotiation coming back and forth for several weeks. They tried to cheat us by pulling some invalid comparable cars data. My DH did a deliberate internet search for the car value himself. We finally settled a price that we can accept, about $5700. A friend of my DH was a car dealer who buy and sell the cars from auction. He found a same year Honda Odyssey for us with some upgrade features: leather seats, DVD, GPS. (We barely used the last two features but leather seats are good)
When we got the replacement, we added the collision insurance to this car so we don't have to deal with the negotiation in the future.
No comments:
Post a Comment