At last the story can be told.
I’ve contemplated a whole series of posts concerning the car accident, but the story has always seemed somehow unfinished and I’ve held off. Now everything is pretty much over and done with, it’s time I set this down.
The car accident occurred on Tuesday, September 18th. I haven’t really got anything to add there except that I appreciate all the help that the police and fire services provided for us. It’s pretty traumatic having been in a car accident with your kids. The firemen ever had stuffed animals to give to Michelle and James. That was very nice of them.
I recognize also that it was also a terrible day for the police officers of that precinct, having had one of their own shot and killed when stopping a jaywalker. They were no doubt very stressed out and stretched pretty thin that day.
The police knew they had a problem on their hands and did everything they could to get us on our way. Unfortunately, we were not given all the paperwork we were supposed to receive – specifically, we got no information whatsoever on the guy who hit us. It’s possible the info wasn’t available, and it’s caused us a lot of grief since then.
Having bought the Maxima from friends leaving the country for considerably less than blue book value, and knowing that it was only worth $7,000 maximum, we did not have collision insurance on the vehicle. We were working on the assumption that if we were in an accident we would either be at fault, in which case our (legally-mandated in Arizona) liability insurance would pay for their problems and we’d pay for our own. Should they be at fault, their insurance would pay for it or, in the unlikely event they didn’t have insurance, our uninsured/underinsured motorist insurance would pay for the damage.
Boy, were we wrong.
In this case we weren’t at fault, and, as far as we can tell, the at-fault driver has no insurance. (More on that later.) Well, I’m here to tell you a dirty little secret about UIM insurance. It’s worthless. Lots of people think they know what it covers, but they don’t. What it doesn’t cover is any property damage. Specifically, my car. Oh, it would pay some for medical bills – if we had any, but the obvious thing that it would be needed for is excluded.
Bottom line, our insurance covers nothing at all in this case. Since we didn’t get the insurance info at the time of the accident, we were stymied as to who to go after to get repayment. The bills for us start to mount up. Towing. Storage. Replacement vehicle.
After a couple body shops indicated that the damage was probably in excess of the value of the car, we bought a new vehicle. That’s $11,000, replacing a $7,000 vehicle. We knew that, even if the guy had insurance that would pay for the car, the most we could hope for is $6,000 – $7,000.
I told you about how I went to the impound lot and retrieved our personal belongings and afterwards received notice that, under Arizona Victim Laws, we were potentially entitled to restitution, even if the defendant didn’t have insurance. Restitution would require that we take the car to a body shop and get a proper written estimate. Of course, we accrued more towing charges getting it to the body shop.
Once that had been arranged, I contacted an advocate at Victim Services. I’m sure they were trying to be helpful, but I felt like I was talking to someone displaced from being a career counselor in the late 1960’s.
For all their attempts, they couldn’t get me what I needed: The guy’s insurance information. They did put me on the <SARCASM>fast-track</SARCASM> for getting the information from Motor Vehicles Division (MVD). They also indicated that, if we petitioned the judge, he could force the person to provide his insurance information. As his hearing was coming up on the second of October, I prepared the restitution request and the request to be supplied with his insurance information as soon as possible and sent it in.
I also went ahead and contacted MVD, and after a considerable wait, I was given the numbers of the forms I needed to get from their website to place a request to check their records and supply me with the registered vehicle’s insurance information on file. After I paid for that information, in just over 60 days they’d send me what they have. If there isn’t any information, they’ll suspend the registration of the vehicle. (yeah, team, hurrah.)
They gave me the wrong form numbers. Their website is useless. You can find out all about the ability to get insurance info, and, after drilling through several levels of their FAQ you reach a question like this: “How do I get the accident package?†Answer: “Give us a call and we’ll tell what forms they are so you can download them off our website.â€
What a load of crap! How about telling us what the f%^king forms are on the bloody page?!
Do you know that when you call MVD, after a long outgoing message which tells you, basically, that the first person you talk to will be useless to you, but they will graciously put you on hold to wait for someone who might be less useless? It’s true!
Five minutes to reach the useless person, 25 minutes to reach the less useless person, who gave me the wrong form numbers, thereby rendering him the “also useless person.â€
Yesterday, Irene attended the hearing. The story goes like this: Our “friend†who’s brought us all this fun is still in jail, having been unable or unwilling to post $500 bail.
He has refused to give any information of any kind, including insurance info. The prosecutor says they can’t break knee caps in this country to get information. Hasn’t he ever heard of Guantanamo Bay?
Probably the reason he’s not paying bail is because, once he’s served his time, he’s going to the county jail to stand on felony forgery charges. After he serves his time there, the INS is deporting him back to his country of origin. He’s an illegal alien.
We’re told there’s no hope of getting any restitution. The car was registered in Arizona, so we’re proceeding to get the information from MVD. No doubt it will turn out to be uninsured as well.
In the meantime, we’re disposing of the Maxima’s dead hulk. The formal estimate put just the external damage equal to the Blue Book value of the car.
Not counting the voluntary “upgrade†to a more expensive car, we’re out of pocket at least $8,000, and it isn’t all in yet.
Three months from now, I’ll let you know if the car was insured.
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