Wrecked!
Yesterday evening, while my wife was driving her father home from the doctors office, she was involved in a car wreck, no-one was hurt and damage was relatively light, however, it will cost us as the damage is likely to be more costly to repair than the value of the car, which in insurance terms is a financial write-off.
The cause of the wreck was one driver following too closely to another car and when the car in front braked abruptly, the following driver veered into my wife’s lane, trying to avoid rear-ending the first car. That avoidance action resulted in this driver sideswiping my wife’s car causing the damage shown above.
To add insult to injury, the driver that caused the chain reaction left the accident scene, luckily I had my wife take photos of the other vehicles license plates to show the police. The moment you expect people to do the right thing is the moment you find yourself royally screwed, bottom line, TRUST NO-ONE.
Wichita police took 3 hours and 40 minutes to arrive on scene, leaving my wife, father-in-law, other driver and her family standing on the side of the road until nearly 10pm, the initial 911 call was made at 6:15pm. I tweeted my displeasure at Wichita Police and their response was, “Minor accidents can also be reported online or through the WPD app.”, so why didn’t the 911 dispatcher impart that information instead of having people wait on the side of the road in a dodgy area on a cold December evening?
Now, we play the insurance game, call the other drivers insurance company, then take the car to the shop of their choosing for evaluation, then we wait for them to check it over and report back to the insurance company, at which point they will decide whether it’s more profitable for them to fix it or just pay out the current value of the car, which isn’t much at this point, Kelly Blue Book suggests about $2,000.
Assuming it’s written off and the pay out is $2,000, we’ll still need to add another $4 – $6,000 to that amount to buy a car with similar reliability and performance. We were considering buying another car anyway as the Saturn is increasingly suffering from bodywork and electrical issues that are costly to repair, not related to mechanical performance, it’s a cheaply made car and 176,000 miles has taken it’s toll.