Just a small rant about hit-and-run drivers and stereo thiefs

My car just got hit on the street by a hit-and-run driver. My car stereo got stolen this summer - the thief also broke my passenger side door lock. A different car of ours got hit-and-runned on the street a couple of years ago.

I just wanted to take this opportunity to express how incredibly frustrating it is to have these things happen, with no consequences for the people who do them.

To the thief who stole my car stereo - my husband got the almost-new car that we needed, and I got a new cd player for my old car, because we couldn’t afford two new cars. The cd player you stole cost about $150, and you probably got $15 for it, if that. Now the only music in my car is a cheap portable cd player because we’re not replacing the cd player because we’re just about ready to replace the car. I’d like for you to know that you made my life just a little bit less pleasant, with crappy sounding music and an inconvenient door that I can’t open when I have arms full of groceries, etc. I mean it - I would really like it if the thief had any idea of the consequences of his little snatch-and-grab.

To the assmuncher who just banged into the same car - you came too fast around an icy corner. You hit my car, and broke my taillight. YOU did this. YOU are responsible for the damage you do while driving. Backing up and driving away with your license plate obscured with snow is a ratfink thing to do, and I am getting a small amount of comfort thinking of the karma that I believe will bite you on the ass for this.

To the assmuncher who hit-and-runned our car a couple of years ago - I’m pretty much over that one. Your karma will give you what you deserve some day, too.

In the grand scheme of things, these aren’t really big deals, I know, but it gets so frustrating living with other humans around some times, with the shabby way that they behave.

I once hit a parked car on a residential street. I tried to find the owners of the car on the street but after trying 4-5 houses at 1:30 am I decided to give up that fruitless effort.

I then called the police on my cellphone and told them about the accident, I waited for them to get there, they took some pictures, filled out a report, and after finding that the car belonged to someone who didn’t live anywhere near there left an official looking report sheet under the car’s windshield wipers.

I’ve heard of people just leaving notes, but I didn’t follow that option because to me it felt like it was too risky. I had every intention of giving this person fair compensation for the damages. But said fair compensation wasn’t going to include damages already on the car. And also, if I just left a note the owner, in a fit of anger or just plain greed could find a way to total the car (maybe damage the frame or something) so he’d get a brand new car on my insurance.

These worries led me to believe I was better off bringing the police in. And since they carefully observed the accident scene they ruled 2-3 things on the car to be “damaged prior to the accident” because they were located on parts of the car that couldn’t be affected by what they saw as the path of my car.

Anyways, it wasn’t that bad of a situation, I paid for the repairs and didn’t feel morally questionable, and I didn’t get screwed.

Well, our hit-and-run happened at 1:00 pm, with my car parked directly in front of our house; my husband went to the window and looked out (we were both in jammies still, being New Year’s Day and all) and could see that the truck that had hit it and was driving away had an obscured license plate. Not really a similar situation.