Carrie's Honda Fit has been in the auto body shop since Saturday with $1,600 body work since she and another lady both rear-ended each other in the parking lot of a massage spa in Torrance. Mutual fault adds a point, which results in a ten percent increase in insurance over the next 3 years. Thank you, Insurance Company.
So I'm on Spring Break. I don't need a car. I'm home with the twins. Carrie is driving my Maxima. Or was driving it.
Yesterday she called from Kaiser (taking our daughter Julia for a routine heart exam) to say she got rear-ended while stopping for pedestrians crossing a cross walk. The guy was horrified when he saw he hit a mother and child. My daughter's vitals were taken. She's okay. Carrie's okay. No one is complaining of a sore back or neck . . . yet.
My Maxima is in the shop for at least 2 weeks. The damage includes busted mufflers and will cost over $3,000. We're renting a 2012 Honda Civic, not a bad car except for the sponge brakes.
In the case of the Maxima, the guy, thank God, has insurance and they're paying for everything.
The irony is that my wife is a better, less aggressive driver than I am. I'd like to use these recent episodes to motivate myself to be a more cautious driver.
For some reason, all this body work has given me car fever and I'm hungering for a new car, an Acura TSX or something equally delicious but with girls in pre-school I understand a new car is a big No-No.
I'm quite fond of that new BMW 4-series myself.
Posted by: Ulysses | April 10, 2013 at 08:24 AM
I'm happy your family is safe! New car fever you can survive! We just had an errant family member discover they weren't quite such a good driver after all. I'm out $15,000 before we even get to increased insurance. Still, I get to hold this over their head for decades to come - because the car is totaled but four people walked away unscathed. I need to find an engineer and thank them!
On an unrelated note, some news coming out that the total CO2 impact of an electric Tesla could be twice that of a BMW (and the rented Civic)
Posted by: Gordon C | April 10, 2013 at 01:45 PM
Glad everyone's okay; every time something like this happens to me it just makes me resent having to have a car - I really love driving, but car ownership sure is a pain in the ass. I welcome our future autonomous car masters with open arms, and look forward to the day when we a sit around and talk about what car accidents used to be like..
Posted by: StarHalo | April 10, 2013 at 03:37 PM