A Trip To The Lockup

It has been an eventful week.

When we had the car accident, both Irene and I looked at the car, and saw that our vehicle had been raked along the driver’s side by the clod who struck us, crushing in the side, doors and shredding both tires.

Owing to what can only be some procedural problem, we did not get the driver’s name or insurance information at the time of the accident, and have been waiting with baited breath for the police report, which takes 10 days to be released. In the meantime, the car has been down at the impound yard.

Today it was necessary to go down there and retrieve our personal belongings from the car. Although the impound yard is not too far from our house, it’s in a seedy warehouse district, just next to The Great Alaskan Bush Company, <SARCASM>cultural highlight of Phoenix,</SARCASM> but the scenery doesn’t benefit from the proximity.

In the parking lot, a disreputable looking crowd of people was just hanging about, and the process to get into the yard is onerous.

Each person approaches the bullet-proof window and shouts through the inadequate opening to the completely disinterested and pathologically unhelpful cashier. Cell phones are banned because it interferes with the tow trucks (oh, cut the crap people!) somehow, and you must conclusively prove you own the vehicle before you can get in.

Just one problem. When we had the accident, the officer required that we provide the registration and proof of insurance, both of which I had; however, when I retrieved them from the glove box, I apparently grabbed last year’s registration. The officer, being a human being, and realizing we were considerably shaken up, accepted it and didn’t mention I’d given him the wrong one. Nothing would be different on it except the expiration date, anyway.

The mindless automaton working at the impound yard was a different story altogether. No current registration – no entry. Problem: The current registration must then still be inside the car, which I cannot get to. Catch-22.

Finally I was able to talk my way in by demonstrating that my insurance card was current and, obviously, If I didn’t own the car, why would I still have insurance on it?

Once inside the fortified security door, I was escorted to a cell, where they left me until someone came to escort me to the car. By cell I mean a locked, 8’X8′ portable holding tank with all the charm, I’m sure, of the county lockup.

Once released from the tank, I was escorted to the car. I cleaned out our personal belongings, most importantly, the car seats, the current registration and my genuine Taiwanese reusable Costco shopping bag.

Then I stopped to take some pictures of the damage.

At the time of the accident, Irene and I both looked at the damage. Irene contacted several body shops and discussed the situation with them before arranging to have the car towed to a shop for repair. Based on the description of the damage, that is, rear and side collision, damage to both doors, the body work both in front of and behind the tires, and damage to the wheels, the body shops all indicated that the damage was beyond the value of the car.

The thing is… upon inspecting the car in the daylight, I’m mystified at the damage. Indeed the collision crushed in the left rear quarter up to the rear door. The both left-side tires are shredded, and the body work around the tires is damaged. What’s strange is apart from so abrasions, the doors appear to be intact. Yet both of us clearly remember them being crumpled in.

Even conceding that, shortly after an accident, our brains were in a state of shock, I can’t figure out the damage seems to have occurred at the point of the front and rear tires, but not in-between. There was only one impact to our vehicle, of that I’m certain. That moment is etched in my mind.

What concerns me is that the damage doesn’t appear to be as bad as we described to the body shops, therefore the cost might no longer be more than the car is worth. Since we bought a car to replace it, one way of the other, the old Maxima will be leaving our possession, but perhaps it won’t be towed off to the junkyard after all.

After we came back from the impound yard, we had mail from the city of Phoenix. We received notice that we were victims on a DUI accident, and we finally have the name, if not the insurance information of our tormentor. One encouraging thing, he is being charged with DUI and Speeding, but there was no mention of driving without insurance. Perhaps there’s hope after all of getting these bills paid for.

In fact, it appears that victims of DUI accidents are potentially entitled to restitution, and we need to submit estimates within 10 days of the violation, which means we now have to get that car out of the impound Monday and get it to a body shop ASAP.

More fun.

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