And I am willing to take that bet. Will she, or won’t she drive better with the cell phone shoved up her ass. Only one way to settle this bet!
I’m the biggest bargain hunter on the planet, but please do NOT take him up on this offer! We’d like you to keep your current helmet in good shape until the transporter comes into common usage…
Glad you’re okay. And good for Bill for getting you to the doctor. (Tell him a random internet stranger wants to give him a virtual high-five)
I’m not sure about being able to pull folks over for it in CA, but I know that’s the case here in OR and I believe it’s true in WA.
Thanks again for the support. Today, I couldn’t go to work. I could just barely get out of bed, I was so stiff and sore. The Doctor gave me a “stay home for a week” note for work, but I don’t want to use it because that will mean that I’ll have to go back and get an “its OK to go back to work” note. I can call in for 3 days without a note, so all is good on that front.
The bolded part is pretty much how I am as well. However, Bill is furious. While I have no idea how to find a good lawyer, Bill does and has. Well, I assume he’s a good lawyer for my purposes, I was able to check his perfomance record in our county and he seems to have a good track record.
We had a long talk about what I should and shouldn’t do. One of the things I shouldn’t have done was leave my damaged helmet at the shop for their display. I need to be able to show the damage to the insurance people, and to show them that I bought the same thing that had been damaged. (for about a hundred more…but I sure do trust that helmet now…totally worth it to me)
I called the shop and they said I could have my helmet back and that I didn’t have to pay the discount back as long as I promised to return the helmet after the case was resolved. I told them that I didn’t know if I could give it back, because it would belong to the insurance company and they told me that I wouldn’t need to pay the discount because it would confuse the bookkeeping. So, yeah…I’ll talk that place up to anyone and everyone.
There won’t be resolution for a while, I’ll let everyone know how it comes out. The stupid bint did get a couple of tickets and I’ll be picking up boxes at the County Attorney’s office on Wednesday. While I’m there, I will talk to the legal assistants about this. They like me, I take their boxes away for them. Once they soften their bosses up, the lawyer will start calling.
I’ve read several studies that say that people using cell phones are as impaired as drunk drivers. When someone is piloting 2 tons of metal down a public road, they should be paying attention to their driving, not chatting on their phones.
For the folks on bicycles who have posted…all I can say is that you are much braver than me. You have a smaller profile, a much lighter vehicle, and not nearly as much protective gear as me. I’d NEVER ride a bicycle in downtown traffic, I’d rather walk. Which is still scary to me. (of course, I can’t ride a bicycle anymore now. I’m so used to the controls on my scooter that when I try to ride a bicycle, I can’t remember where the back brake controls are. I reach for it with my right foot, find nothing there and then run into something or fall over in gravel.)
Good! The cop wasn’t asleep on the job. This just makes your case look better and better.
Well if flatlined does take them up on the free 11th helmet offer, she will have to changer her user name to unbreakable or maybe unfreakingbreakable.
I gasped out loud reading your OP flatlined! Woke up the husband and scared the cat. So glad to hear you are (more or less) OK. This past weekend I had one friend pass out from what we later found out to be blood loss from an ulcer she didn’t know she had, and another fall and break her hip. No more!!
Well, as a bicyclist I find that real city traffic, with lots of stoplights and effective speeds under 25 mph, isn’t so bad. For left turns, though, I will sometimes pull over at a stoplight and briefly metamorphose into a crosswalking pedestrian if I don’t feel comfortable getting out into the left lane of traffic.
What scares me, and what I try to avoid wherever possible, is exactly the sort of situation you described: a two- or three-lane high-traffic road where bicycles are technically permitted, but
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the average speed is significantly faster,
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the lanes are more crowded, and
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there are lots of errand-running trip-chaining distracted drivers trying to multitask.
That’s where I don’t feel at all happy being on two wheels.
I don’t understand the concept of talking on a cell phone while driving. I guess that’s because I’m evidently not a brain-dead moron. Back in 2002, I got rear-ended by a clueless bint (love that word, by the way) who was talking on a cell phone. Get this: at least she got out of her SUV to see if I was injured. But she had continued with her cell phone conversation! Yes, that’s right. She didn’t even stop talking to whoever some brain-dead moron talks to after they cause a crash because they’re a talking brain-dead moron. She told the person on the phone that I had caused the accident because I had braked suddenly. Two things wrong with that excuse: (1) I couldn’t have stopped suddently because I was already stopped at the tail end of a line of cars at a red light; ad (2) it doesn’t matter if I had stopped suddenly as that would’ve meant the bint had been tailgating and still at fault.
Yes, I was slightly injured. Her insurance company paid for everything, including a rental car for me while my car was in the shop and for my medical bills. One funny thing about the incident happened when I called her insurance company. The person that was handling the claim said to me, “Mr. Monty, that lady is the biggest liar I’ve ever had to deal with in my career!”
I hope that lady’s insurance rates and the OP’s moron-in-question’s insurance rates both rocketed to the Moon. Maybe that’ll be the only thing to stop them from driving and “cell phoning” because they’re certainly not going to do the intelligent thing and put down the phone.
The insurance company should be bending over backward to treat you nice - you’ve got a pretty damn airtight case for a lawsuit, and their aim should be to give you enough consideration to go the hell away. Nickeling and diming you on the repairs is not the way to go about that, so they’re being pretty foolish.
Keep track of every single penny you spend, and every single cost you incur, as a result of this. Include in that any lost time from work, the copay at the emergency clinic, money spent on services etc. for stuff you’d normally do yourself (e.g. takeout food for a few days because you can’t cook), etc. It’s quite possible that any medical expenses you incur, your medical insurance will try to go after the driver for as well (I don’t think you have to be involved in that); certainly you will be asked if the expenses were the result of any sort of accident that another party might be on the hook for (I was sent a questionnaire the last 2 times I broke bones).
When Typo Knig’s last car was totalled, the insurer was eager to basically buy us off. We had a list of real costs (time off work to deal with the car, personal property that wasn’t recoverable from the car, etc.) that added up to something like 800 dollars. They said “how about 1200, and you go away forever”. By that time we knew he wasn’t permanently injured (and 13 years later, he’s still fine) so we said sure. This was above and beyond the price of the car - they gave us a fair payoff for that as well.
Oh - and impaired while driving: yep. Even if you’re hands-free (which is the only way I’ll ever take a call while driving; very rarely I’d pick up the phone, say “hang on”, then pull over). Even if your eyes are on the road, your attention is divided; for some reason, more so than with having a conversation with a passenger. My own story with hands-free: I was out of town on business, the trip was actually to the town I grew up in, so I knew the roads rather well. Using my bluetooth, having a conversation with husband and kids - and completely missed my highway exit. That particular exit was one I’d taken literally hundreds of times before and could have done in my sleep… but because of the phone call, I missed it. It was a pretty good wake-up call that “hands-free is NOT safe, just slightly less dangerous”.
We will one day have the technology to make cell phones only operable via bluetooth when in the dirvers seat.
Would that have helped, in the OP’s case?
I saw an item on TV about a phone that through GPS can’t be used while the vehicle is moving.
That restriction can be bypassed though, so there seems to be little point to it unless it’s turned on with a password and meant for parents of teens who drive and SOs who are bints, and who would use it at red lights and stop signs anyway, and/or stop in the middle of an eight-lane highway to post a tweet.
flatlined, I’ve never met you, but I’d be damn sad if something happened to you. Hang in there, and take good care of yourself.
God I love you.
I had a similar rear-end. The woman had just picked up her new car from the dealership and was on the phone telling hubby. I stopped for a school bus w/red lights on and she didn’t. She hit me hard enough to slightly bend the frame in my truck. I had a hitch on the back of my truck so her brand new car (less than 15 miles from the dealership) had the entire front end buckled into the ground. Thankfully, she’d insured it before pulling off the lot.
The insurance company sent an initial check for my damages/expenses beyond fixing the truck (I went to ER w/sever neck strain). I told them I’d ask a lawyer about it and they tripped all over themselves to cut me a new check for all expenses + $1000 for pain/suffering. To me that was fair enough (I spent three days in severe pain).
But I bet (hope) that lady will never drive distracted again. Her shiny new car was completely totaled. WORSE - had I not stopped in front of her, she could have driven through one of the elementary kids getting off that bus.
There are cell phone jammers on the market, all they have to do is hard wire one into the car so that when the engine is running, the cell phone has no coverage. If I had kids, I’d have one wired into ever vehicle they drove.
Wow.
Have you ever seen Tin Men?
I’ve read the same thing and texting is even worse.
Is that outlawed in all states now? I know it is in NYS, and the cops will occasionally stop people for doing so. My wife nearly hit a car driven by a cell phone user who blew through a red light. A cop saw the near accident and stopped the perp.
Glad the “bint” got a few tickets. Justice.
BTW, I’ve lived to retirement and, to the best of my recollection, had never seen that word used before. Had to check on Urban dictionary to be sure my guess from the context was correct.
Nickel and diming is par for the course when dealing with insurance companies. They explain about fictional ‘policies’ that don’t let them pay for damaged things on the bike, etc. These policies vanish quickly when you have a case where the other person was 100% at fault. You simply have to explain to them that they can pay for the small stuff or you’ll be talking to a lawyer to discuss the issue and it will cost them much, much more than some threads. In the cases I have encountered as a bicyclist, both personally and from friends this happens all the time. The other favorite is to try and devalue your bike (“So this bike was a year old? Let’s see it cost $600 when new so it will be worth $300 now…” “Excuse me?!”). They do this because they get away with it. Most folks think their stuff isn’t worth arguing over. A bit of stiff backbone and the threat of lawyers tends to get them to back down, especially in an open-and-shut case like this.