…so move your fucking cars out of the road! If you’re waiting for a cop, he doesn’t need to see the exact positions of the cars. If the front of one car and the back of another are smashed in, he can probably figure out what happened.
I understand that you need to trade insurance cards and/or wait for a police officer. But guess what? You don’t have to do that with your cars in the middle lane of a major road during rush hour. It looks like it’s only a fender bender, so you should be able, if you’re very careful, do drive it the 20 feet to the shoulder. If you’re waiting for a cop, you should know that this is the first thing he’s going to tell you to do. Meanwhile, you’re causing dozens if not hundreds of hours of wasted time because the blocked lane means that traffic is backed up for almost a mile.
It’s been a few years since I had an accident, but I think my insurance company told me at the time to never move the cars until the police arrive. Has that changed?
I don’t know what insurance companies are saying, but I’ve been in…well, more than coluple accidents. Every time, the first thing the police officer did was tell us to get our cars out of the road (if we hadn’t already) if they were driveable and nobody was hurt. There’s practically nothing that a police officer can learn from looking at the positions of the cars, and it’s rude to obstruct traffic if you don’t have to.
Unless it has changed in the last few years, the law in Alabama says specifically that if it is a non-injury accident and the cars are able to be moved then you have to move them to the side of the road.
Or at least that’s what it was 4 or 5 years ago when I lived in B’ham.
FWIW, I’ve seen those big programmable roadsigns in both PA and GA stating that in the event of a non-injury accident, cars should be moved out of the lanes of travel. I see them most often in high-traffic commuter areas.
I just checked GEICO’s web site, and they say “if necessary, move it to a safe position near the location of the accident.” It’s sort of vague, but they don’t say that you shouldn’t move the cars.
Heh. Thanks to our wondrous city council here in Houston, in many stretches of freeway if your car is stopped in the freeway for more than a few minutes, or even off on the shoulder, it will be towed whether you like it or not.
I forgot to rant a similar rant earlier this week. I was at a shopping center and a GIGANTIC Caddy SUV and a smaller Honda were involved in some sort of backing into one another accident. By Og, they were not moving their cars- they were blocking at least 10 cars from leaving. I pulled (in my 1990 piece of shit Volvo) dangerously close to the Caddy’s uninjured bumper, stared at him while he stared at me, and finally just yelled out “Um, MOVE YOUR CAR!!!” until he reluctantly backed up a few feet to let me out. WTF? Unless there is a body in the trunk or someone has been hit and hurt, just move the fucking cars! WTF??