Monday, July 9, 2005 at about 2:45 PM. my beloved Hyundai Elantra was smacked in the rear end by a guy in a Chevroltet heavy duty Pick Up; He claims his foot slipped off the brake and onto the gas. He is self employed and owns a prosperous business in the building trades. I think he was probably talking on his cell phone and didn’t even see the red light until too late. He did accept full responsibility and admitted to the FHP who investigated the accident that he was at fault. He was given a ticket for either reckless driving or careless driving; I wasn’t thinking too clearly at the time. I’ve been in contact with his insurance company and they admit their policy holder was at fault. They are springing for a rental car and assuming all cost of repair.
I was belted in and I had my foot on the brake; I didn’t hit the car in front of me. I did get tossed around a bit and today I am sore all over but I’m not injured----I’ve been checked out by the medics and they say I’m okay. I was a little nauseous right after the accident but that was probably a result of the adrenaline—I was absolutely furious, so much so that I threatened a guy who outweighed me by at least a hundred pounds and who was approximately thirty years younger. He told me to calm down and after a moment of mature thought during which I realized if I hit him, he probably wouldn’t even notice I smiled and said forget I said it. We shook hands and waited for the FHP to show up.
I loved that car and now it will never be the same. Damn it.
I’ve been on both ends of this story. It’s not fun, either way. My truck ('98 Dakota) produced substantial damage in both cars (they weren’t at the same time), but you never could tell either of the events happened.
Ouch. Glad you’re all right. At least he had insurance and was decent about it. A friend of mine spent ages researching and aquiring her perfect car. A week after she finally bought it she was sitting at a red light and was rear-ended by an uninsured driver who later tried to claim that she’d cut him off. Go get a nice massage. It will relax all those painful, tensed muscles and make you feel better.
I was rear-ended while driving our minivan last year. The other driver was in a rental, probably just picked up from one of the nearby lots, and IIRC in the middle of a phone conversation when he pulled alongside to see if I was okay. I was in the left lane preparing to enter a post office parking lot on the opposite side of the street; he failed to notice I wasn’t moving in enough time to completely move over. The van got a messed up bumper and a small dent in the liftgate whereas the rental’s crumple zone did just that.
This is where I have problems. I can understand the adrenaline, but yelling at someone and threatening them? What were you threatening him with, and about? What exactly did you expect threats to accomplish, especially when he was admitting his fault? My elderly mother had her foot slip off the brake while sitting at a light, and her car hit the one ahead…not hard, because she didn’t have her foot on the gas at all. This man yelled and screamed at her as if she had willfully slammed into him at full speed…and her, a tiny little old lady! She did way more damage to her own car than to his.
And fifteen years ago, the same thing happened to me…my foot slipped off the brake, and I tapped the guy ahead. No visible damage to either of us, but from the way he screamed at me (and made me cry in front of my kids, and the cop) you’d have thought I had gotten out of my car at the light and broken all his windows with a tire iron. His wife finally got him to calm down, but still…is this a guy thing?
