Jeep crash; or It's good to have insurance

In My Humble Opinion
1

A couple of weeks ago I was on my way to work. At one of many parts of the freeway (in this case the 105 eastbound) traffic slows and occasionally stops. I was in the far right lane and had brought my 1999 Jeep Cherokee to a stop behind a Nissan Maxima. Since I “keep my head on a swivel” when I’m operating a vehicle, I looked in the rear view mirror as part of my scan even though I was stopped. I saw a 1988 Pontiac Grand Am coming up fast. “I hope she stops!” I thought, “She’s not going to stop!” SMACK

I had my foot on the brake of course, but she still pushed me into the Nissan. We three pulled ofer to look at the damage. I went back to the woman who hit me and asked for her registration and insurance. “I don’t have insurance,” she said. She also complained of abdominal pain. I went to get my phone and called 911. I told them to send out the CHP and that there was a possible injury. By this time the driver and two passengers of the Nissan were out of their car. We looked at the damage. The Nissan’s plastic bumper moulding was broken, as were the rear light lenses. My front license plate was gone and there were gouges in the plastic bumper overriders and the paint on the bumper was scratched. No dents, virtually no damage. One of the passengers compared the damage and said, “There’s nothing wrong with it [the Jeep]! I want to buy one of those!”

I went back and the Pontiac driver was on her cell phone, so I looked over the damage. The trailer hitch had taken most of the impact. The little box that protects the wiring plug was bent. There was a small dent where the lip of the Pontiac’s bonnet hit my hatch. Gouged bumper overriders and scratched paint. It looked as if my Cherokee was virtually unscathed. (I found out later that the frame was bent aft of the rear axle where the trailer hitch is bolted to the frame.)

The Pontiac looked as if it were wearing a bow tie. The ends had sheared their bolts and had moved forward and the middle was pushed into the radiator. (I smelled glycol and heard hissing when she pulled over.) If there was a grille before, there wasn’t one now. There was sheet metal damage as well. Now the driver was complaining about back pain as well as abdominal pain.

My insurance paid for the repairs to my Jeep since the at-fault driver was not insured. Just under $3,400 at a Jeep dealer.

I would not want to be the girl who hit me. My insurance company will go after her to recover the loss. The Nissan driver’s insurance company will go after her for his damages. The girl will have to replace her bumper, grille and possibly the radiator, plus repair the sheet metal damage. But wait! There’s more! For driving without insurance, the CHP officer said she’d be getting a ticket in the mail. I was curious later, so I called the CHP and they said that while the actual fine is set by a judge, it’s usually about $1,400. I’m assuming that the Pontiac will be impounded for 30 days. I think that runs about $760. She was taken to the hospital. (I doubt she was seriously injured; probably just scared.) So there’s an ambulance ride and the emergency room to pay for. And since the damages were more than $500 or there was an injury, her license will be suspended. Finally, she’ll have to get to work somehow and will have to pay for that as well. Just as a ballpark figure, I’m guessing her costs will be close to $10,000. Oh yeah, when she drives again she’ll have to buy insurance.

I hate paying for insurance. But my Jeep is fully repaired (“Paint the bumper? Nah, it’s cheaper to replace it with a new one in the same colour.”) and I still have my license intact. Now that I know (or at least have estimated) what even a minor collision can cost, I’m going to be less irritated when I write the cheque.

(FWIW, I read that something like 22% of the drivers in the L.A. area do not carry insurance.)

PS: I wish I had rental car coverage. Since the Willys is too slow to drive over 40 miles to work, and since I had houseguests and we wouldn’t all fit on the Yamaha, I had to rent a car for $230 for seven days. I could go after the girl who hit me for recovery, but it’s already costing her so much for the collision that I would fear for my karma.

2

Umm…BabyCherokees don’t have frames… :confused:

3

Glad you’re OK, Johnny! Thank God for insurance!

What insurance can do:

I had parked my 2000 Mercury Mountaineer in front of a store. It was very windy that day, and as I was checking out, the cashier remarked that a fixture in front of the store had blown over and bashed a ‘Ford Explorer’. As I approached my car, I saw that it had a dent in the hood, and scratches on the bumper and elsewhere. Gasp It was MY new baby that had been bashed!

The store manager was already out there taking pictures. He apologized, had me fill out the form for their insurance, and my car was fixed within one week. New hood, new bumper! As you pointed out, it’s cheaper to replace than repair in some cases.

What a lack of insurance can do:

My daughter’s first car was a VW squareback. She loved it, and it was her ‘baby’. While driving to school one day, she was rear-ended (much like you were.) The at-fault driver had no insurance. As I only carried liability on my daughter’s car, it was totaled. The poor girl was inconsolable. I had to replace her car, and I learned to carry liability AND comp on it. I shudder to think what the consequences would have been had my daughter suffered injuries. I would have had to foot the bill, and the at-fault driver, with no assets, would have just shrugged his shoulders and said “Sorry about that, man.”

Sorry just doesn’t cut the mustard!!

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Glad you are ok Johnny. When I read the thread title I thought your old cool Willys had bit the dust and severe injuries were dished out all around.

I have had several occasions to be thankfull for insurance and find it incredible that people actually drive without it. Incredibly stupid that is.

Again,glad you and the Willys are ok.

5

Where I live, driving with out insurance gets your license revoked for one full year. I know first hand. After the year is up you have to re-apply, re-test it is just as if you have never had a license before. I was the oldest person at the 6 hour course. Full insurance now and forever.

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Glad you’re ok, JohnnyL.A.. But I have absolutely no sympathy for the idiot without the insurance. I can’t stand this attitude, and I have no problem seeing it bite people in the ass. Hopefully she’ll never drive again, with or without insurance.

Again, glad everything’s ok with you!

7

Thanks, all, for your thoughts.

The Cherokee is a unibody design. While it doesn’t have a “frame” per se (i.e., a “rolling chassis”), it does have a frame that is formed as part of the body. Remarkably, the design has proven very tough since the Cherokee debuted in 1984.

The Willys is fine. I’ve been driving it around this weekend. Nothing wrong with the XJ of course; I just felt like driving the ol’ CJ around.

I understand your feelings. Believe me, I do! But I can see the other side: Insurance is unbelievably expensive. I’ll bet the girl could barely afford to buy the 13-year-old Pontiac she was driving. In addition to high rates, jobs for people in their young-20s generally don’t pay a whole heckuva lot. I don’t know what she does for a living, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she has a lower-paying job or is a student. She might have just been unable to afford insurance. On the other hand, there are other ways of getting around. (Although if you’ve been on the busses around here – as I have when I take the Yamaha to the shop – it’s not a pleasant way to go.) She’s been handed a very costly lesson. I hope she learns from it.

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You know? I knew I should’ve checked the vB code before I hit submit! :o

9

But you could have rolled over and died!

SCORE!!!

You poseur.

:wally

Seriously, glad to hear you’re ok.

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Glad to hear you and the Jeep are OK, Johnny.

My Jeep (a ZJ) was rear-ended at a stop sign about 2 years ago. At first glance, there wasn’t much damage to the bumper besides a few scratches; however, after climbing underneath the Jeep I noticed a plastic clip had fallen from the base of the bumper–evidence that something in the understructure was bent. The guy who hit me had insurance, but he kept insisting that “it doesn’t look like anything’s wrong with it [the bumper].” He changed his mind about this after he talked with my dad shortly after the wreck.

The total repair bill was $800 for replacement of the bumper, repair to the bumper’s understructure, and labor. There was no damage to the body of the Jeep. I probably could have kept the bumper, thus reducing the repair bill, but everyone I talked to–from the people at the body shop to a mechanic friend of my dad’s–agreed that the bumper might not perform as adequately again under similar circumstances.

On a side note, the front of the truck that rear-ended the Jeep was demolished. The grille was broken into about 50 pieces, the bumper was crumpled, and the right headlight was broken.

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The funniest thing about all of this was seeing the very centre of the girl’s front bumper with a nicely-formed negative-mould of my hitch ball. It looked like purpose-made shipping packaging.

Oh, the dealer replaced my hitch. The only thing I can see wrong with it is that the metal box protecting the plug is bent. I told them that I use the hitch, so to be safe they replaced it. Upon examining the old hitch (which they retruned to me) it’s still perfectly servicable. Hm. I wonder if my neighbour’s Cherokee needs one?

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Yeah, I knew that. :stuck_out_tongue: I’ll stick with the full-frame, fullsize Cheros and Wagoneers.Mine sure took a hell of a hit.

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Dammit! I closed that italic tag! I’ll admit I forgot the bold, though. Little help, Veb and/or Czarcasm? Please?

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Are you mocking me? L

Yeah, I’d seen those photos. Are you going to fix it? Or is it fixed already?

BTW: Anyone who wants an XJ Cherokee had better hurry up. Even though it’s one of Jeep’s best sellers, DaimlerChrysler (pronounced “DIME-ler” – the “Chrysler” is silent) is discontinuing it this year. Its replacement will be the “Liberty”, which I’m told is bigger on the outside and smaller on the inside. It will not be as capable as the Cherokee. All Jeeps must run the Rubicon Trail, but when the Liberty ran it there were teams that ran ahead and stacked rocks so that it could get over the obstacles. So technically DC can claim that the Liberty “successfully made it over the Rubicon”, but honestly it needed a lot of help. And it broke some important bits that make it go. Heck, with enough help I could have taken my old Porsche 911 over the Rubicon!

In any case the wonderful XJ Cherokee’s days are numbered. Get 'em while you can!

(I was going to get another one in a few years – and keep the one I have – but I’ve decided to give my money to Toyota for a Tacoma pickup instead. If I can’t have solid axles I may as well get a non-offroad vehicle.)

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Just a bit. :slight_smile:

I hope to fix it, but it looks like it’d be easier and possibly cheaper to get another one that needs work and use mine for parts (mom doesn’t like that idea–she wants it gone or running), but I might just sell it and get a '50s project car.

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Glad to hear everything worked out okay.

This is a tangent, but truthbot opened the door.

My grandfather bought a 4WD Toyota Tercel a few years ago, brand-new off the lot. He drove it straight from the dealer to his State Farm agent. He went in, got the paperwork squared away, had the agent come out and eyeball the car to verify it was brand-new, etc., etc. Then they went back inside to finalize everything.

He signs the policy, making everything legal and effective. He chit-chats with the agent for a few minutes; they’ve known each other forever, since my grandfather picks a good representative for every service and sticks with 'em through hell and high water.

Anyway, about ten minutes after he signs the forms and shakes hands, as they’re sitting there gabbing over coffee, they hear a tremendous crash. They all run outside, and discover that a gust of wind has blown the insurance agent’s sign off the roof, and – you guessed it – flat onto my grandfather’s brand-new car.

Crushed it. Destroyed it. Totalled it. Literally minutes after signing the policy.

This is one of my family’s favorite stories, for obvious reasons.

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Good to know that you are alright there, Johnny Boy. Where would the SDMB without it’s top helicopter pilot?

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Thanks for all of the good thoughts, but it really wasn’t much of a crash. It was enough to push me into the car ahead of me, for my frame to be slightly bent (although being slightly bent myself I didn’t notice anything was wrong until I closed the door and it rubbed), and to mess up the front end of the car that hit me. Except for some possible radiator damage, the Pontiac seemed driveable. It was really just a “fender-bender”, except my fenders weren’t bent. As far as the girl going to the hospital, I think she was just scared. But thanks anyway! :slight_smile:

Cervaise:
Okay, to continue the tangent… My mom called yesterday. I told her about the collision and she told me that before I was born my dad bought a brand-new Oldsmobile. Four days later either he or my mom was stopped behind a car at a stop sign and the Olds was hit from behind, totalling it. I thought that four days was a short time before a car got totalled, but the same day…! That’s got the Olds story beat! I love the irony of the car being totalled at the insurance office. LOL

19

I had a co-worker who went thru a similar situation, and ended up getting sued by the person he smacked. That is, someone smacked him (while stopped), sending him into someone else’s rear-end. Everything was resolved. . .

Untile one month before the statue of limitations was up on suing. The driver that he was cueballed into was going to sue him for whatever he could get. The judge dismissed the case, but you never know what another judge might have done. . . .

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Hmmm. I doubt that obnoxious neighbor of yours needs one. However, you close, loving, caring, dear personal friend bernse could sure use one! :wink: