The Death of A Forester (of the Subaru Variety)

So, I’ve mentioned it once or twice, but I figured it was time to take a moment and write down the story of my recent car accident. I’m going to leave out the names, because that just wouldn’t be fair, but I thought it would be good to document the whole thing while it was still remotely fresh in my mind.

So, on Thursday July 22nd I left work at around 3:50pm, quite a bit earlier than normal because I’d gotten there early for the Short Course, and drove home. It was quite hot that day, and traffic was heavy leaving the island. I was excited to get home because our new couch had just been delivered that morning, and I hadn’t seen it in the living room yet. As I approached Ellsworth, the traffic backed up substantially at the old Walmart (now a Marden’s) traffic light, which is marked with the bottom blue pin in the map below. I slowly approached the light, waiting through two or three light cycles with everyone else in line. Eventually I was able to make it through along with a bunch of cars both before and after me. I noticed that there was a police car parked in the parking lot of the church across the street from the Marden’s. At this point the traffic cleared a bit and I progressed up the road for a little ways to the second blue pin on the map, where I stopped in traffic for the light at Beechland Rd at the top of the hill.

Just as I stopped, I glanced in my rearview mirror (a good habit, I might add), and saw a Chevy Malibu approaching that didn’t appear to be slowing down at all. I reacted immediately to get out of the way and turned my wheel and started to pull off to the right shoulder of the road, but I was too late, and the car behind me hit me. Luckily, since I had turned my wheel and started moving, when I got hit, I didn’t get the “full brunt” of the impact. The car behind me pushed my car off of the road and then continued forward and hit the Jeep that had been stopped in front of me. I remember accelerating for a second to get out of the way, and then the impact, and then I kept going to get the car out of the road. My car was now making a loud grinding noise as I continued, which turned out to be the sound of my rear driver’s side plastic mud flap scraping against my tire. I actually looked to the left just after the impact and watched the second collision happen next to me.

Seconds later, the male passenger of the back car hopped out and asked me if I was okay. I was confused for a split second because I then realized that my right-hand side was quite wet (is it blood?), but then I realized that the impact had spilled the coffee I had in my cup holder onto me. I was fine. I hopped out of the car and looked around as he continued to check on everyone else. I wandered over to the side of the road where I met up with the driver of the Malibu, and the driver and passenger of the Jeep. Apparently there was a fourth car that had gotten bumped by the Jeep, but they inspected their car and decided that there was no damage, so they took off. I was surprised to discover that I recognized everyone standing there! We all worked at the Lab!

Luckily, no one was seriously injured. The female driver of the Malibu had a small scrape and burn on her left arm, which looked like it was probably from the airbag. The passenger of the Jeep complained that her neck hurt a little, but she didn’t think it was serious at all (and I heard the next day that she was fine a few hours later). Everyone else was completely uninjured.

The driver of the Malibu apologized (repeatedly) and told me that she wasn’t sure what had happened, but that she thought she must have dozed off for a few seconds. She had no recollection of what was happening until after she hit me. Her husband (the male passenger) said that he’d been sound asleep and only saw her hit the second car. The driver told me that she had tried to hit the breaks after she hit me to try to stop before hitting the Jeep, but that they “didn’t work” (I suspect that she might have hit the accelerator accidentally in her panic and confusion, but who knows). Either way, she hit me full force without breaking at all. She wasn’t sure how fast she was going, but the speed limit there is 35 MPH. While going through the previous light, I had just about enough time to get up to speed before slowing down for the traffic at the next light, so she was probably going roughly 35 or so.

The Malibu and Jeep were both still in the middle of the road, and some bystanders were helping to direct traffic. At this point, we wondered why the police officer just a bit down the road hadn’t come up to investigate. One of the occupants of the Jeep called the police to report the crash, but a few minutes later, the police car still hadn’t moved. So, at this point the passenger from the Malibu walked down to talk the the cop. It didn’t take long then, and he returned with the police officer in tow. He spoke to us all and got the story and then took our IDs and insurance information and went back to his car to write up the report. In the meantime, another police officer showed up and started working to clear the road. They actually got the Malibu to start back up, which was pretty surprising since the whole front end of the car was pretty much obliterated, and it was leaking fluids everywhere. The Jeep was completely drivable, though the rear bumper was badly damaged. The police officer had us move these cars into the neighboring used car dealership parking lot.

The second police officer asked if my car was drivable. I said I didn’t think so, but only because the mud flap was scraping against the tire. We walked over and looked at my car. The back-end was pretty well smashed in (particularly on the driver’s side), but it didn’t actually look that bad. The bumper was obliterated, but the cargo area was mostly okay. The passenger compartment and front end were, of course, untouched (since I didn’t hit anything). The main issue was that the rear driver’s side wheel well was crumpled in a bit, which made the hard-plastic mud flap press against the tire. The officer suggested I find a tire iron to see if we could remove the mud flap to make the car drivable, so I checked in the trunk. While in there, I saw that the floor of my cargo area was buckled up a bit (again, particularly on the driver’s side), and the rear door didn’t close properly after I opened it. It latched, but it took a couple of tries, and the light stayed on. In the end, I couldn’t find anything good to use to pry off the mud flap, so he had me just drive it over into the neighboring parking lot to wait for the tow truck.

The police officer who originally took our reports came back and gave me the incident number and explained that the insurance companies could contact him for the insurance details, and I didn’t need to collect all that information because he had it all. (I actually took a picture of the insurance card for the Malibu’s driver anyway, which later did come in handy.)

Soon enough the tow truck came, and I called Jenn to have her pick me up. While I waited for her, I called Met Life to report the incident. The insurance company claims agent was very helpful and made arrangements for a rental car for me immediately, and made arrangements for my car to be taken to Ashmore Brothers, a local auto body shop (I just needed to call in the morning to have the car towed over there). She was glad I had the policy number of the driver who caused the accident, and that she happened to also have Met Life insurance.

So, that’s the initial story. Since then, I went into the auto body shop to get some stuff out of the car and check on the estimate process. When I got there, I saw that they had the read end of the car torn apart somewhat. I asked the mechanic how it looked, and he said, “Not good. She hit you pretty good there.” This didn’t really inspire a lot of hope. So, a bunch of time passed. I didn’t really check on it, because I’d been quite busy with work, and we had a trip to Philadelphia planned for the August 1st weekend. Finally, I got a call from my claims adjuster this past Friday (August 6th) and she told me that it was a total loss. She said I’d be hearing from the appraiser who would have further details for me, but I haven’t gotten any further calls yet.

I’m really disappointed that my car is apparently going to be totaled. As I said, it didn’t look that bad, but my dad told me that rear end damage can be quite expensive and difficult. Plus, since the whole front end of my car was completely untouched, it will make an ideal “front end clip” and probably has a high salvage value. I started the process of shopping for a new car yesterday, but without knowing the details from the insurance, I don’t know what I’ll have to spend at this point. The car, which was a 2004 Subaru Forester, by the way, was paid off and hadn’t had any issues at all. I’d bought it new, and it had been a great car for the whole time I’d owned it. Unfortunately, it did have high mileage (around 108k or so), so this doesn’t help the book value of the car. One of those classic issues where the car is worth much more to me than it is on paper.

So… That’s the poorly written account of my car accident, preserved here for posterity.