Someone hit my car? Again?!

The BBQ Pit
1

Let’s look at the tally, shall we:

About a month and a half ago: Some douchebag parked next me scarped his front bumper along my rear passenger door, leaving a large dent and two long black streak marks. Decided he was too self-important to leave a note.

Exactly a week after that: A large truck comes out of gear (according to the owner, his dog knocked it out…well, don’t leave your dog in the car when you go shopping, fucko!) It backed into my car and a coworker’s, wrecking her bumper and taillight, but just leaving a small dent on the corner near my trunk. Annoying and sucks ass, especially cause I just got hit a week ago, but at least he left a note. I got the estimate and the insurance check came already. I was going to take it to a body shop owned by a friend of my dad’s to get a good deal and pocket the difference from the insurance check.

Yesterday: As I was stopped to make a left-turn, waiting for people to cross the street, a large truck slammed into my back end. My trunk has two large dents on either side, it can’t latch, the bumper is partly off, the taillights on both sides are popping out a little bit, and scraps and paint damage all over the place. Jesus. Titty-Fucking. Christ. Again, at least I got all this guy’s information and he can make a claim and I don’t have to pay, but it’s annoying as Hell! I have to keep my trunk strapped down with bungie cords to my towing hook on the bottom of my car. There might be frame damage, I feel fine now (had a sore neck after it happened, but 4 advil took care of that and it didn’t come back today,) but it still sucks ass-cock.

Oh, and my check-engine light came on the other week, which makes it the fifth time in the three years that I’ve had it it has come on. :mad:

I still owe about $2500, and the check from the guy’s insurance almost certainly won’t be that much, so I can’t just pay it off instead of getting it fixed and get another used car, as much as I’d like to. Unless I can also get money from my insurance (which I don’t think I can, I mean…wouldn’t it be illegal to get money from both mine and his for the same accident?)

It just pisses me off that so many things are happening to my car. Karma owes me big…if I believed in that sort of thing…which I don’t. Although maybe I should start…

2

Bouv, I still have whiplash issues from an accident 15 years ago. Get yourself checked out.

3

So which is it? Or is the $2500 for the other accidents and engine trouble?

Anyway I think you should be more worried about your body than your car. (That’s not a medical advice, just a general statement based on the fact that a car is easier to replace.)

4

The problems seem to be getting larger. What will it be next week? Debris falling off an overpass, as you go under, or a boat falling off the trailer going down the highway?

During a night this week on the interstate, a antique car was been towed on a trailer in the dark. We could see sparks on the road for maybe ten seconds near the taillights. The sparks then started skidding across the lanes and dropping back. The car to our right got lucky, that the 4 foot rod or whatever it was skidded sideways and didn’t impale the driver through their floor.

5

bouv, you should consider driving something a little more robust. :smiley:

6

I just KNEW Jesus loved the titty-fuck.

That blows though. I had my driver’s side mirror knocked off, and drove around for a month before I could get around to getting it replaced. Not 1 week after I did I got knocked off again. That time I just got some epoxy and stuck it in place. Damn you Saturn for not making your mirrors swivel. And damn you Boston (area) drivers!

7

Bouv, face it, some vehicles are imprinted with a big red bulls eye, invisible to everyone but bad drivers. Every now and again, fate dictates that you will own one.

My last pick up truck was hit eleven times during the fifteen years that I drove it. I never had to turn in a claim to my insurance company, just other folks’.

If your frame is bent, that will likely total the car. Maybe it’s time to retire it and find something else. Something that the check engine light isn’t coming on on a regular basis.

Best of luck…missred

8

Sorry for the confusion. I meant that my car loan still has $2500 left on it. If the damage is enough (like a bent frame,) then there’s a chance the check from his insurance will be enough to pay off the rest of the loan, and then I’ll get another used car, though probably not as nice a one, since I don’t have a lot of money.

9

Maybe this is where the karma’s coming from. I know, everyone does it, but it doesn’t make it right.

10

What’s not right about it? If the guy wants to charge me less than the insurance estimate, that’s perfectly fine. I don’t even have to get it fixed if I don’t want to. I was given a check from his insurance, and I’m free to get my car fixed and pay for it from that money, or not get the car fixed and keep the money. If I can find a repair shop that can let me do something in between (get it fixed but still have left-over money,) then good for me, and maybe the insurance company shouldn’t make me go to places that give over-priced estimates.

11

I thought they are giving you the money to restore your car to what it was before the accident, not for you to pocket it. It’s too bad they don’t have folks claim expenses, the way medical insurance does.

12

They give you a check to compensate you for the damage. If you don’t fix the car the resale value is lower so you are compensated for that.

13

They’re giving him the money to cover his losses due to the negligence of their driver. His car lost value due to the accident, and it’s that value loss they’re making up. They determine how much that should be by having a body shop do the estimate, but that doesn’t require him to apply the compensation for his losses to repairing them.

14

When my car got broken into by some dickwad with a blowtorch, I found that the amount the insurance company was willing to give me plus the as-is trade-in value of the car was more than the trade-in value of the repaired car would have been. I told the insurance company what I planned to do (take the money and trade in the car as-is), and they didn’t seem to have any problem with that.

If they did have a problem with that sort of thing, they presumably wouldn’t offer the option of taking a check rather than taking the car to an approved body shop and having it fixed. I don’t feel that I did anything wrong or took advantage of them.

15

Thanks for the explanations. That makes more sense now.

16

Then you’d end up with a paid-up car with frame damage. Is that really more valuable than an undamaged/repaired car with a loan?

17

The insurance got all sorted out and I sent my car off for an estimate and…it’s a total loss. Apparently the NADA value is $3650, and after they subtracted for a few pre-existing damages, the total value of the car is $2427.90. I don’t know what the estimate was, but it was more than that, so they won’t pay to fix it. I can either take that amount and they keep the car, or I can take $2077 and get the car back. I owe about $2400 on the car loan, so it’s a tricky situation. I’ll probably take the loss and go get another used car. But I do want to see if I’m allowed to take back the after-market stereo that’s in the car, along with the amp, subwoofer, and speakers (I didn’t install it, it came with it when I got it, but it’s a nice system, so I want to keep it if I can.) Seeing as it’s just going to get auctioned off to a salvage yard if they keep it, and I don’t think the value of the stereo factored into how much money they’re going to give me, I don’t see why I shouldn’t be able to take it. I’ll just remove it when I get all the other crap out of my car.

So now I gotta start looking around for another used car…

18

I totalled a car once, and after the insurance company cut me a check I went to the lot and took out the stereo and a bunch of other parts. Shouldn’t be a problem you’re taking items that are not applied towards the cars value for insurance purposes.

19

So things are a bit better, and a bit worse. The better is that I owe less than I thought on my loan, and the insurance company and the loan people are just sorting it out amongst themselves, and I’ll get a little more back than I thought. I’m still taking back my car to strip out the stereo and sell it to the other guy.

But the worse part…I have to return the rental car tomorrow. Excuse me?! I was told on Friday that the car was totalled, so I apparently am only allowed a weekend and two days to find a replacement car, apply for a loan, et the loan approved, and get the car registered, insured, and get it all on the up-and-up? That’s some BS right there. I’m lucky that I have family close-by with a spare vehicle for me to borrow, but what if I didn’t? I’d be forced to shell out ~$30/day to keep the rental, or try to go car-less, which would entail leaving for work two hours early to catch the buses, and begging people at work for rides home when I was done, since the buses don’t run that late. Not to mention it would then be that much more difficult to find a new car if I can’t get to where it is to see it. That same body-shop owner mentioned previously said he usually sees the rentals being given for ten days after I was notified of the car being totalled. Not ten days after the accident, mind you, but ten days from when I was actually told I basically needed a new car, which was last Friday. I instead got four days, two of which were weekend days so I couldn’t even start the loan process if I wanted to.

Oh, and the used Honda Civic hybrid I saw online I really wanted is too damn far away…grrr. :mad: :stuck_out_tongue:

20

My friend hit a deer last week and it looks like her truck will be totalled (~$5600 damage to the front end). She had this idea that as soon as it’s totalled, it goes into the auto smusher and she wouldn’t get to retrieve her stuff! It was a Tacoma that came new without a rear bumper so her then-boyfriend had made her one out of a 4x4. She wanted to get that back at least!

But her insurance pays $20 a day rental so she has to kick in ~$10 a day and as you say, it could be a while. That sucks.

Thanks to the patience of bouv and others in this thread, I was able to be relatively intelligent about what totalling meant.