Saturday, October 31, 2009

I've joined the club...

So... yesterday I got into a car accident. I've now officially joined the club of non-perfect driving records. I've still never gotten a speeding ticket, so knock on wood I guess.

This is the story:

It's 4:15pm, freezing cold and I don't have a coat. Instead I'm dressed as a Pirate because I dressed up for work that day. After stopping off at the pharmacy I started driving home. We were only going 20 mph through a stop light. We went one block into a residential intersection.
This is what the girl driving the car I hit told me: The car in front of her moved into the turning lane but didn't move all the way into the lane. She tried to pass the car on the right hand side, but there was a car that was in the intersection too far. She stopped so she didn't hit that car, and I slammed on my breaks.
For some reason I didn't slow down and I slammed into her bumper. After telling Mark's cousin about it, I realized that my breaks locked and that's why I didn't slow down after hitting my breaks. I didn't even know that could happen.

We pull off to the side of the road in the feezing rain, realize that we both have never been in a car accident, and then call our husbands. While we're on the phone I see her go up to her car and wipe off her bumper. Some of our paint transferred onto their car, but as soon as she wiped off her car we find out that nothing happened to her car. Our car, on the otherhand, was another story. The hood got folded up a bit and the front of the car was smashed up a little. We find out that we both live in the same apartment complex so we decide to leave the site and go to the complex. (yeah, I know)

Mark told me to call the Provo Police, so I did that and we waited for the cop to show up. The cop was an idiot. I'm glad that this wasn't a bad accident or else I would've died before he even showed up. He passed us like 5 times before I could waive him down. He got there and asked if anyone was hurt (no one was thank goodness), looked at are cars and said that no report needed to be filed because we weren't hurt and there was less than $1,000 worth of damages (thank goodness again). He told us that the worst thing to do is to leave the incident site.. so us leaving was the worst idea. He also said that we wouldn't have to go through our insurance companies unless we wanted to, which we opted not to do.

After we exchanged info I drove to the mechanics.

Here are pictures of our car.


Not the worst that could have happened that's for sure.

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While all this was going on with me, this is what Mark was doing. Mark had changed shifts with his coworker so he was actually at work when this happened. I had to call our company's receptionist, get transfered to his department and then ask to be transfered to him. Luckily he wasn't on a long call, and luckily his supervisor understood and Mark got to leave work early. We had committed to babysit for Mark's cousin and I was supposed to be there at 5 to be with the baby. Mark had to go up to their house, get the car seat installed, figure out how to drive their car (it's complicated), get all the baby bag/stroller stuff together, and then drive down to be with me. By the time Mark learned how to drive the car I was already at the mechanics.
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So I'm ok. All I have is a sore lower back. This was a great learning experience for me. Although I feel like a horrible human being for getting into this situation, I'm just glad that I'm ok and that I've learned a lot from the situation.

The mechanic took a look at the engine and took the car for a drive and said that everything is ok. They aren't even going to charge us for the inspection. :) Now we just need to take our car to a body shop to get the exterior taken care of. I definitely feel very blessed.