Crash

My first car was gray. A gray Honda Accord hatchback. I loved it!

Sporty yet economical.

Not sure why I opted for gray as I had just spent three years wearing nothing but gray. And gray can be so… depressing.

Especially in winter.

To cadets, West Point was infamous for its “Gloom Period,” when the weather was cold and blustery and… gray.

So why would I pick a gray car?

I’m not sure. I honestly don’t remember. Except that I liked the dark metallic gray color on the car. It seemed sleek and sexy to me at the time.

I don’t think I would ever pick a gray car now.

My most recent purchase was a dark green Subaru Outback Sport. I liked the look and feel of Subarus and the fact they have AWD -- and I really needed a new car fast. My previous vehicle had been totaled in a parking lot in Alaska when a pickup truck slid across the ice and into my car.

Green was the only color the Subaru dealer in Fairbanks had for Outback Sports at the time. So I took it.

I mentioned to several people that while I had picked the car, I had not picked the color. One friend asked me: “Well, what color would you have picked?” Huh. I was stumped. I couldn’t answer. There was no particular color I was looking for. And in the end, I fell in love with my green Subaru.

My poor little green Subaru.

Which was slammed into by a GRAY – well, OK, technically it was silver – car just over a week ago as I was driving to work. It was relatively late in the rush hour scheme of things, but the day had included a two hour delay for most school districts in the area so there was probably more traffic then than usual. The two hour delay was not due to snow or ice, but rather to ungodly frigid arctic temperatures. It was about ten degrees but felt like negative ten or fifteen.

I was almost at work. Only a few blocks from my final destination. I was stopped at a red light, first in line. The light turned green, so I started driving. Which I had been taught was what you were supposed to do when a light turned green.

Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a car approaching on my left where one street intersected with mine, but silly me, I assumed it was going to stop at its RED LIGHT. Only it didn’t. It was one of those incredulous moments where all in a flash you see something happening that you know is not right and should not be happening yet there is really nothing you can do about it.

The car plowed into the left rear of my Subaru. I pulled over to the side of the road so all of the “witnesses” could rush by on their way to work and got out of my car.

I could see that the other car had hit the left rear wheel of my Subaru. The hubcap was all scraped and dented, and the rear bumper was kind of askew. I turned to see the other car. The driver was emerging, shaking his head in disgust. I couldn’t tell if it was disgust at me, disgust with himself, disgust with the situation in general, or the fact that his car was now missing its entire front bumper as well as other metal and plastic detritus which was littering the busy street.

One never knows what to expect in this day and age of road rage, and I was afraid of pissing off the guy who had hit me. I didn’t yell: “What the fuck were you doing???!!! You just ran a red light and hit me!!!” Instead I said something lame like, “You know, I had a green light there.” He was rather noncommittal; I don’t remember if he said anything in reply. He might have grunted. He definitely did not say: “Oh, I am so sorry. I just ran that red light and hit you. It was all my fault.”

Which apparently was what my insurance company was hoping he would say.

Rrrright.

To the other driver’s credit, he was very calm and matter-of-fact. He asked me if I was OK. And he already had his insurance card and driver’s license out in his hand. That made me think: “Oh, I should have my insurance card and driver’s license out so we can exchange information.” I actually had a vinyl packet with the requisite forms and paperwork in my glove box – thanks to my insurance company. I dug a pen out of my purse. The other driver didn’t have a pen, so I dug another one out of my purse for him. And we started exchanging information. I had a little notebook in my purse, too, and that’s where I was jotting down information.

It ended up that the other driver was driving a rental car. He showed me proof of insurance and his driver’s license, as well as his rental car agreement.

The road we were on was right along the river, and the wind was whipping off the water. The temperature there must have been about twenty below. It was so cold the ink in the pens kept freezing up. And I couldn’t write with my gloves on, so I had to take them off.

I was shaking it was so cold and I was so stunned by what had happened.

A policeman – well, what I thought was a policeman (it ended up being a paramedic) – stopped to see if we were all right. He took one look at my car and said it would have to be towed, that the wheel looked bent. So, I went to call my insurance company to report the accident and inquire about getting a tow truck. Of course, that was when the real policeman showed up, and he wanted to talk with me right when I finally got a live person on the line at my insurance company.

He ascertained that there were no injuries. Two tow trucks showed up on the scene (apparently they monitor police frequencies for incidents just like this), but he told them to leave. He looked at my car, then had me pull up a few feet. He asked me where I was going and when I told him, he said he thought I could drive the few blocks and then decide if I thought I needed a tow truck.

I tend to be extremely trusting of authority figures, like policemen, and I was freezing and shaken up, so I followed his directions without much question. I drove very gingerly to my place of work and then noticed that the left rear wheel was tilted at an angle that was decidedly unnatural. It made me wonder – could the car have some kind of “internal damage”? Cracked axle, twisted frame, who knew?

It was one thing to limp a few blocks through the city, quite another to contemplate driving home on the highways at rush hour in ten degree weather!

I told my insurance company I did not feel safe driving the car and that I thought it should be towed. They tried to encourage me to drive it to a pre-approved garage so one of their appraisers could look at it. They said if I left it in my work parking garage, an appraiser might not get there to look at it for one to three days. I asked to have it towed, even if I ended up having to pay for it.

Plus, I needed a rental car in order to drive to and from work. Luckily, this was part of my insurance – I learned that the hard way up in Alaska when our coverage did not include a rental car and I ended up having to pay over $1,000 out of pocket after my vehicle was totaled in a parking lot!

I got a rental from an agency approved by my insurance company; it was only about two blocks away from where I work. I was not very happy that I ended up with a PT Cruiser, which is a hideous vehicle. I kept seeing those old commercials of Celine Dion driving down the road in a PT Cruiser singing. Plus, the vehicle reeked of cigarettes. Ugh.

But whatever.

This was the only vehicle they had left by that point in the day, other than huge vans, SUVs, or sports cars. Bottom line: it would get me from Point A to Point B.

At least for a while.

Around five o’clock, a tow truck finally came for my Subaru. Since my car is AWD, the driver had to bring a flatbed truck. As he was setting things up, he turned to me and said, “This happened this morning, didn’t it?”

“Yes,” I replied, not thinking much of this observation.

“At the intersection of Fort Pitt Boulevard and Wood Street, right? I was there.”

It ended up he was driving one of the two tow trucks that had shown up on the scene. He said he could tell right away that my vehicle needed to be towed, but the policeman told him to leave.

The tow truck driver said that if there are no injuries and no vehicles have to be towed from the scene, the policeman does not have to write up a report.

My trust in policemen immediately went out the window.

All the policeman had wanted to do was clear the scene and avoid having to write a report. I can see how maybe he has to deal with lots of incidents like this, and he needs to keep the flow of traffic moving. But the tow trucks were right there! The guy just didn’t want to have to write up a report.

I realize that the tow truck driver sees things from his perspective, too, and that, of course, he wanted to tow a vehicle away from the scene. That’s his job. But isn’t it the policeman’s job to ensure safety? What if my car had not made it from the scene of the accident to my place of work? Or I had been involved in another accident along the way?

Live and learn, I guess.

At any rate, at the end of the day, I was glad that no one had been injured in any way; my car was taken to a place where it could be appraised and hopefully fixed; I had a rental car to drive temporarily; and my insurance company was handling all of the details of the accident and insurance coverage.

I was safe. I was shaken up, yes, and I was now nervous about driving. But I was fine.

Next installment:

Part II: Life with a PT Cruiser and how life comes at you fast….