I'm sorry to hear that your car was damaged, Justin, but at least you'll
get paid for it.
I've been on both ends of the "it's my town" situation.
With my first registered car (a '68 Chevy BelAir), my buddies and I were
comming back from fishing one morning. I was approaching a stop light on
a highway, and noticed a car stopped at an angle at the light. The brake
lights and the backup lamps kept going on and off on the car, so I
stopped about 100 feet in back of it. Suddenly, the backup lights on the
car came on, it's tires started squeeling, and it shot back the whole
100 feet and collided with the front of my car at an angle, crushing my
front fender.
The guy driving opened the door and fell out. He staggered to his feet,
got back into the car and tried to start it again. One of my freinds got
out of my car reached into his, and switched off the ignition and took
the keys. Then another of my buddies went ot a pay phone to call the
police.
This guy was totally out of it. He had an expired license, which turned
out later to have been revoked anyway, no insurance card or
registration. The car turned out to be someone else's. The police let
him go and returned the car to the owner. They only gave me his name
after about a month of my aggravating them, and they never gave me the
name of the driver. I never found the owner at the address they
provided, and never collected a dime.
About 4 years ago in my home town, I was approaching a traffic light in
my Olds wagon, which had a trailer hitch. I wasn't going very fast since
I had my whole family in the car. The light changed, I slowed down adn
stopped at the light. Wham! The car jumps. I look back and see I've been
rear ended by a Chevy Nova. I get out to look and see that I've got no
damage, since the Nova Hit the trailer hitch square. The Nova isn't the
lucky, the front of the car was toast. This teenage girl gets out of the
car (which had out of state plates), see's the damage to her car and
starts screaming and yelling about how I stopped short and I'm going to
pay her for the damage. Right.
A cop I know is right in the intersection, directing traffic. He saw
what happened. He had us both pull over to the curb and told her to stay
in her car while he talked to me. He wanted to know if I wanted her to
get ticketed, since it was obvious that she'd been speeding and/or not
paying attention. Before I could answer, she got out of the car and
started in on both the cop and me. He put her back in the car. I told
him that I didn't care if she got a ticket or not, I wasn't interested
in anything more than being on my way. He went over to tell her she
could leave, but she started screaming at him some more, came over and
shoved me, and then when the cop came over, shoved him. Bad move.
After he put the cuffs on her and put her in his car, he called for a
truck to tow her car. She got fined for disorderly conduct, and
assaulting a police officer. She spent a night in jail, and had to pay
the towing and storage costs for the car, although when last I heard,
some moths later, the car was still there.
--
George Richardson
'57 TR3, TS15559L
(getting ready to paint - and now on the web!)
http://www.merlingroupinc.com/tr3.htm
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