Car Accident

I got into my first car accident on Monday, and I am glad to say that I am alright and it wasn't my fault.

I was on my way home after getting my hair cut when it happened.  I was at at the stoplight on 8th Street in Moorhead waiting for my arrow to turn green to make a left hand turn onto 30th Avenue.  The light turned green and I began making my turn when a driver heading north on 8th Street in a 1988 Chrysler New Yorker blew through the stop light and hit my car in the intersection.

It all happened fairly quickly and I really had no time to react, not that it would have mattered much.  I just remember seeing headlights rapidly approaching me and I slammed on the brakes just in time for the other driver to nail the front end of the passenger side of my PT Cruiser.  Thankfully both of us were okay after our cars collided with each other.

We drove our cars to a nearby parking lot to assess the damage, and I have to say that mine was worse off than his.  His car had barely a scratch on it, just some minor damage to his license plate.  My car, though, had a loose grill, a hood that wouldn't shut, an engine that sounded weird, and a cracked bumper with some new white paint on it.  We called the police and traded information before I finally drove off and made my way back home.

I was really dreading the next day as I was not looking forward to filing a claim to get my car fixed.  I finally made a call to his insurance agent, who transferred me to a central claims department where I was able to file my claim.  The nice southern woman on the other line informed me that I would be hearing from an insurance adjuster within the next one or two days to get the ball rolling on getting my car repaired.

I really wasn't impressed with the wait as I wanted to get my car fixed and put this all behind me.  You can imagine how surprised I was to have gotten a call from the adjuster a few hours later.  She told me I would be able to take my car anywhere I wanted to, although they do have a few preferred locations that do repairs.  The place I happened to choose, which is less than a mile from my house, is one of those locations.  She told me that I could bring my car in that day and she would also set me up with a rental car while my car was being fixed.

I brought my car to the shop where they looked it over with me.  Turns out that PT Cruisers are hard cars to write estimates for as the front end is so compact.  From what they could tell without taking it all apart is that the damage is a lot more extensive than it appears.  For starters, the reason the grill was loose and the hood wouldn't close was due to the fact that the body had shifted to the left.  The mechanic said the driver had to have been going a lot faster than the 28 MPH he told the police officer.

While I was at the repair shop, I got a call from the rental car company about getting set up with a car.  I don't think they were ready for me to get one right away as they were light on cars, but they did find one, and ironically enough, was brought in by a guy who is being dropped off at the same repair shop to pick up his newly repaired car.  I am now driving around a 2012 Nissan Maxima as my car is being repaired.

Even though I was really dreading the whole process of getting my car repaired, I have to say that I was surprised at how easy it was and how nice everyone was to me.  Everyone from the adjuster, to the mechanics, to the girl who picked me up in the rental car was extremely nice to me.  I wouldn't advocate anyone to intentionally get into a car wreck to get first hand experience in this process, but I was preparing myself for the worst.

I haven't yet heard anything about the condition of my car, but I did take some video of what it looked like before I brought it into the shop.  Don't let the video fool you, it ended up being a lot worse than it looks.

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