07
Apr
2007
Old Blog: 12-20-2003
At Hut's Hamburgers, we got on the topic of car accidents we had been in. Not sure how that conversation got started but I was reminded of the accident that I got in a few years ago. I dug the blog post I made a few days after the accident and have it posted here for your reading pleasure. Re-reading it, I had forgotten that I had to get up the next day after the accident to lead worship at church:)
Saturday, December 20, 2003
3:06 PM
Before:
After:
So for those who don't know, or for those who wanted to ask... last Saturday night around midnight, while leaving the Barrington house, I was rear ended by a drunk driver on 38th and Medical Pkwy.
The story goes, we were second in line at the redlight. Being a long red light, we simply sat there waiting for the light to go green. Then, to no apparent reason to us, the car in front of us drove off, running the red and leaving us wondering what was going on. Less than a split second later, the impact came, jolting us in our seats. After coming to rest, I quickly asked Angela if she was okay. She said she was, and we stepped out of the car to see who it was that had hit us. To our amazement, we found no one behind us; just the shattered plastic from my taillight assembly strewn down the road. Fortunately, Angela caught a glimpse of a car racing away around the corner. "Get in car!" I exclaimed, and I was ready to smoke this guy through the city. Angela accidentally dropped her keys getting in, which cost me precious 10ths of a second, but after the doors closed, I dropped the clutch and ended up doing the best launch I'd ever done with my car. I quickly powered into VTEC range... even damaged, my car was not going to lose this guy.
Surprisingly, we caught up with him after only 2-3 blocks. He in his Pathfinder was stuck at an intersection stop sign where traffic was passing. Behind him was an old white sedan, which we thought was the perpetrator. Not knowing what else to do, I honked incessantly as Angela leaped out of the car and began beating at the car window. As the car turned, I noticed there was no damage on the white car. But the car in front of the white car was pulling into the adjacent gas station with its front bumper hanging slightly off. Once again, I burned through the intersection, leaving a really nice skid mark in the middle of the road which Angela pointed out to me later.
The guy in the Pathfinder came out of the car as I pulled into the gas station. I figured I wasn't going to give him a hard time about hitting me, or trying to hit and run me. Plus, I was more concerned that Angela was okay than my own car. So I asked the guy if he was okay. The white sedan eventually pulled into the gas station and it turned out that the driver, a woman, was a witness and had seen the entire accident as she had been following the Pathfinder. Angela got her information and I thanked her for chasing down the Pathfinder and stopping for us.
I turned to the driver of the Pathfinder and mentioned that we should swap information as well as call the police to get a police report. To which he responded, "no, let's not call the cops. my insurance is good... i've got full coverage." He then proceeded to call his insurance company, Progressive, and report the accident through them. As he was on the phone, Angela began saying to me in Mandarin, "should we call the cops? I think we need to." I told her to hold off on that as we took care of the insurance stuff. She called my dad while I ended up talking to the insurance agent on the phone and working out the coverage details.
We ended up dealing with the insurance agent for probably a good hour or so. They were just asking all the information, what cars were involved? who were the drivers? who were the passengers? what happened exactly? A lot of detail went on in this conversation. At that point, my dad had already arrived on the scene. He brought with him a digital camera to document the damage. He began taking pictures of the cars, and then asked the guy to pose for a picture next to his damaged Pathfinder. At that point, the guy became very resistant and angered. He refused to have his picture and began getting all up in my dad's face. My dad, who doesn't take crap from anyone, started getting up in the guy's face. We needed to call the cops but he kept refusing and the arguing kept elevating. I had to intervene. I broke up the argument and began talking to the guy peacefully, asking him some more information and assuring him that we didn't need to call the cops if he would just freakin' cooperate. While we were talking, my dad secretly snapped some pictures of him, which I thought was pretty funny.
We finished talking and were ready to leave when I realized, "hey, I don't have your drivers license. Let me copy it down really quick." To which he realized, "oh no, i don't have my license. I left it at home." Almost instantaneously, Angela, my dad and I chimed in, "then we HAVE to call the cops! why are you trying to trick us?"... etc etc and etc. He really didn't want us to call the police, but at the same time he would never give me a straight answer about why? Only, "man, if you call the cops, I'm gonna go to jail." So my dad then said, "okay, I'll take you to your house, you can pick up your license, and I'll bring you back." Well, I didn't feel comfortable having my dad go alone with a stranger to his house, so the decision was made for me to accompany my dad, and Angela would call for Joyce and stay with the damaged cars.
The ride to his house was thankfully, uneventful. However, on the way back, Angela called me and told me that they had called the cops while we were gone and they were now on the scene. I wasn't sure if that was a good thing since we had told the guy that his cooperation would negate the need to call the po-po. When we arrived back at the cars, the guy had fallen asleep in our car. We stepped out of the cars and let the 3 cops take care of him. They questioned him for a while and then two of the cops said, "let's go for a walk, so we can talk more in private". The third cop stayed behind to get my side of the story.
Every so often, I'd look across the street to see what the two cops were doing with the guy. They began by talking, and ended up performing a sobriety test on him. The next time I looked over there, the guy was in cuffs and the cops were searching his pockets for weapons of any sort. The last time I looked over there, the cops were leading into the back of the squad car. Up to that point he had been fully cooperative with the police, but I guess he realized that he was in pretty deep doo-doo for being drunk as well as doing a hit-and-run... so he began trying to wrestle away from the cops and the squad car. The two cops chased him down and tackled him to the ground. It was seriously like an episode of COPS. We finished all the paper work on the spot and then the police let us go. That was at 1:30am, one and a half hours after the accident. Fortunately my car suffered no mechanical damage and I was able to drive home, albeit slowly.
Being sore and unable to sleep, I didn't get to bed till around 3am, and had to wake up 3 hours later for church. Not surprisingly, some people mentioned I was kinda out of it while leading worship. With due reason, of course. The bottom line is though, I was thankful everyone was okay.
What the post doesn't say is that I spent over 6 months fighting the insurance company (Progressive) trying to get them to fix my car correctly. In the end, they ended up spending well over $10,000 to repair and replace everything. According to my own insurance agent (Allstate), that should have been sufficent for them to total the car. But he said their strategy was probably to try to save themselves money and try to jip me. Now, whenever I see a Progressive commercial on TV, it makes me laugh.
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Feel free to send me email about this for more details, I'm pretty familiar with the policies now. My email is jimmysu (at) gmail (dot) com.
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