Car Accidents

Friday, July 27th we picked up Craig's 10-year-old "brother" Darien of the Big Brothers, Big Sisters program and Darien's 13-year-old sister Devenny. We were on our way to eat pizza for dinner when we had a car accident. Craig was driving the Honda on a road we hadn't been on before. The accident occurred where the road was merging with one of the main roads in town (a road we have been on many times).

Craig was looking over his shoulder to see if there was room for him to merge. I noticed that the car in front of us had their brake lights on for quite awhile. As we got closer I realized that Craig didn't realize they were stopping because he was looking over his shoulder. I made some sort of "Aaaaahh" noises because I couldn't get the word "Stop!" out. Craig heard me, faced the front, saw the other car and hit the brakes. He knew we wouldn't stop in time so he turned the wheel hard to the right to try to swerve around the car. We hit the right taillight with our left headlight and ended up on the side of the road (thankfully, it was flat and grassy).

We weren't going very fast so nobody in either car was hurt and Alisa didn't even make a sound. The other car had 4 college students in it and they were very nice (the driver immediately apologized to Craig). The driver of the other car called the cops. He apologized to us for having to do that but it was his dad's car and his dad told him to (he called him for advice right after the accident). We said we would have called the cops if we were him (we knew it was our fault since we were the rear car).

The cop arrived within 10 minutes but didn't let us go for an hour because he was doing all the paperwork. We were starving so it was hard to wait. We stood outside for awhile because Alisa didn't want to sit in her carseat anymore. It started raining though so we had to get back in the car. Alisa got her first mosquito bites (2 on her face and 1 on her leg) while outside so it was fine that we had to get back in the car because then she didn't get anymore (though they didn't ever bother her). Alisa became hungry during the wait too so I fed her. After dinner, Devenny was going to watch Alisa while Craig and I went to a movie and we nearly cancelled those plans because the accident messed up our schedule. However, after we got home we looked at the movie times again and saw that we could still make it to one that wasn't too late. So, Devenny got to earn some money babysitting after all (and it was easy money because Alisa went to bed for the night as soon as we got home). She and Darien spent the night.

Site of the accident (witness' car was behind us)...you can click on this picture to see a larger version (there is a little debris on the road where we collided):

There is minimal damage to the Jetta we hit (you will have to click on the picture for the larger version to even see it):

Damage to our Honda:

We were without our car for 8 days while the shop waited for parts and repaired it. The total amount was $3,135 which was more than I thought it would be because the damage doesn't look that bad. We had to pay our $250 deductible (I'm glad it's still low) and $140 for half the price of the hood. The reason we had to pay for part of the replacement cost of the hood is because it had hail damage from 2004 that the insurance company had paid me for but I never got fixed. We tried to get out of that charge by arguing that even if we had fixed the hail damage, they would still need to get us a new hood now but they didn't go for it. The traffic ticket for careless driving was $120 and Craig got 4 points on his license. He didn't have any points before because he has a good driving record. Oh well. We think they need a longer merge lane on that road because while we were sitting on the side of the road that lane kept filling with cars and they were having to stop because the front car was unable to merge right away. You just don't expect to have to stop like that when merging onto a highway or road like that.

This reminds me of another car accident we had in this town. It was in December a few days before we went to Tulsa for Christmas. Craig was driving the Jeep and it was raining. We were on the way to pick up the Honda from the shop where it had an oil change and tune up so it would be ready for the long drive to Tulsa. We were about a mile from our house and first in the left turn lane facing west. The light turned green and no other cars were moving so we moved forward. Suddenly we heard and felt a loud crash and realized we were spinning around. It was surreal and felt like slow motion. We ended up facing the way we had come and were by the median. Craig backed the Jeep up over the curb onto the grass so we'd be out of the way since the light was turning green for the cars that were heading our way. A cop car was in the left turn lane facing north so he immediately turned his lights on and did a U-turn to get to us. He said he didn't actually see it happen, he just saw us spinning. Once we were out of the way, we looked to our left and saw that the car that had hit us had smashed head on into the large lightpost on the corner. There was a lady and her baby in the backseat and her mother was the driver. We got out and looked for the damage done to the Jeep. At first we thought the other car hit the back of the Jeep because the bike on the rack had been knocked part of the way off. When Craig was backing up out of the road I saw the bike dangling and thought it had been smashed. We were baffled when we could see no damage to the bike or the back of the Jeep. We circled the Jeep and looked closer and saw a few scrape marks and paint on the front right tire rim. So, the other car hit us there and so there was no body damage to the Jeep. We had the alignment and other hidden stuff checked out to make sure nothing was damaged and the shop said there wasn't anything wrong with it. What a truck!

Back to the scene...I went over to the lady that was holding a baby and asked if they were okay. She said she thought so and then ignored me. A firetruck and ambulance soon showed up and the ladies (who happened to both be large women) went into the ambulance. We stood around in the light rain and then sat in the Jeep while the cop did the paperwork. I was 6 months pregnant but didn't get much attention because the ladies were drama queens and were carrying on quite a bit. The firemen came over to admire our Jeep and they talked about how the driver of the other car had been eating french fries with ketchup while driving and there were fries, ketchup and soda all over the front of the car. She had been in the far right lane and had just cruised through the red light. We didn't even see her coming because the left 2 lanes both had a line of cars stopped at the light which blocked our view of her. The wreck was her fault and I wonder how many tickets she got. I'm thankful that we were not hurt and that we were not driving the Honda then because it would have gotten smashed and would have messed up our travel plans. We could have taken the Jeep to Tulsa but would have barely any room for our things and Minga, let alone the Christmas presents (and we would have paid a lot more for gas because the Jeep has poor gas mileage).