Accidents Will Happen

After years of accident-free driving, I was involved in an accident today when I was rear-ended by some dozy bint who had somehow failed to see that I’d stopped at a zebra crossing to allow someone to cross the road. She rammed into the back of me and luckily I had my foot on the brake or else I would have run over the lady crossing the road!

I parked the car up and got out to take a look at the damage. The first thing I saw was her car, the headlights were smashed and the front was all cracked and broken. Luckily the only damage to mine was a cracked rear panel in a couple of places and so it shouldn’t take much to fix it. As long as there’s no structural damage underneath! So at least she’s come off worse!

Fortunately neither of us were hurt, we weren’t travelling at speed and most of the damage is purely cosmetic (I hope). We swapped details and I drove the car the 100 yards home to take a look at the damage a bit more and took some pictures for reference.

But it’s not just the accident that’s annoying it’s the hassle I have to go through to get things all fixed again.

First up I spent nearly an hour on the phone to the insurance company and the subsequent company who are going to deal with the repairs. Having to explain to them seperately exactly what happened and confirming that I wasn’t at fault (I already knew that!), and then finding out what I’ve got to go through next to get my little Punto fixed up and looking new again.

I’ve now got to find time during the week (because nowhere’s open from Saturday onwards for a week) to drop the car off at a repairers so that they can quote on the repairs so the insurers can OK a replacement vehicle for me. But I can’t get the replacement until the quote has been done so I’ll be car-less while this happens

If I can’t get there until Saturday, what are the odds they won’t do the quote that day and then they’re shut until Wednesday? It’ll take a day to do the quote and then for all the involved companies to speak with each other, I may not get a replacement car until the Thursday.

So hopefully I can get there either tomorrow or Monday and get everything rolling as soon as possible.

The most annoying thing? I was driving back from the train station where I’d dropped The Wife off, something I’d offered to do as a ‘a good thing’. And this was my reward. So a special “thank you” to the God of Rewarding Nice Things With A Bunch Of Crap!