This last week has been so frustrating. We have been in not only 1 car accident, but TWO! Both of which were not our fault.
I’ll write today about my accident, because I have a feeling things will get interesting with this one.
Really, it was a relatively minor accident. Here’s what happened. I was stopped at a red light when I looked in my rear view mirror and saw some girl driving a very fast speed straight at me – oblivious that I was even there because she was too busy talking on her phone.
After she hit me we pulled over and instead of an apology the first words out of her mouth were “Just great! I’ve already been in jury today and now this?” It seemed like she was upset at me for interrupting her phone conversation and never even bothered to acknowledge that she had just run into me. Since she was going out at a pretty high speed I was already feeling pain in my neck and had a huge headache from the impact.
Here’s where my stupidity comes in though….I was to busy thinking about the party we were having at our hours in an hour and all that I needed to do to get ready. Also, at this point my head was pointing and all I wanted to do was get home and sit down. So, because of that I didn’t even bother to call the police and wait for them to come and fill out a report. That was mistake #1. Mistake #2 – choosing to believe the best in the lady that hit me. Steve always tells me that I’m way to trusting of a person and this time it turned out to be true. Looking back I see all the warning signs. She swore to me that she would take care of everything and said she preferred to pay it out of her pocket rather than go through the high deductible of her insurance. I took her at her word and got her name, phone number, address and took a picture with my phone of her license plate # and the damage to my car. I just wanted to get home. I tried to file a police report later, only to learn that you can only do that in Madison at the police department between the hours of 8-4 during the week. Obviously I’m working at that time, so it’s kind of too much of a pain to take time off of work to file a police report that will probably be worth nothing.
It wasn’t until after I got home and Jacq made a comment about “I bet she felt so bad” that I realized that there was a problem. She didn’t feel bad. At all. She never once apologized and looking back on our conversation it seems like the lady actually tried to made ME feel bad because SHE ran into me. AGH!
Anyway, so last Friday I went and got an estimate and called her about it only to get her voicemail. She never returned my call. I called her again on Tuesday and left yet another voicemail but once again my call was not returned. Steve brought it up last night and I could tell he was really mad. Since we live relatively close to the lady he decided that we would drive over and knock on her door since she wasn’t returning my call.
We surprised her to say the least. She answered the door wearing nothing but a towel and had every excuse in the book as to why she didn’t call me back. She hadn’t listened to her messages. She saw my phone number pop up when I called her and though I was just a telemarketer so she didn’t want to answer. She’s been in jury duty for the last 2 weeks. Anyway, all of that to say she said that she was planning on taking care of things but she just hadn’t had a chance to call me. She also tried to lie to Steve and convince him that I told her not to worry about. As if my husband would believe a complete stranger over his wife, and if that were the case why would I even get her information in the first place? There was a lot more drama that went on in our conversation, but all of that it to long to get into.
So then we made mistake #2. We gave the lady a copy of the estimate I had received to get the car worked on. It wasn’t until we got home that my heart sunk when I realized that our address was printed on top of the estimate. This lady seems extremely shady and to be perfectly honest I’m scared of what she might do now that she knows our address. I could tell Steve was nervous as well even though he tried to tell me that it would be fine.
This lady obviously has no integrity and at this point I just want to forget about even getting the car fixed in the hopes that she doesn’t come vandalize our house or further vandalize our cars.
I don’t know about you folks, but if I ran into someone and it was completely my fault I would not only feel horrible, but I would do everything in my power to make it right and get right on taking care of my offense.
Anyway, so that’s the story of my accident. Thankfully Steve’s accident isn’t full of quite as much drama even though his was more serious and his car had more damage then mine did.
It’s just been frustrating because it feels like our life in Madison has been full of little stories like this from day one. I’m learning to keep my chin up. In the big picture it’s just a car and some ignorant lady and in 5 years I’ll have forgotten all of this happened, but in the meantime it sure is frustrating. I think it’s just the “justice button” inside of me that gets so angry when people are not held responsible for their actions. Had the lady been nice and apologetic, we would have completely forgotten about the whole thing and not even bothered to get the car fixed. It’s not like we drive luxury cars or anything anyway. I just get so upset though by people that try to talk their way out of taking responsibility for their actions. I don’t feel like we’re wrong in trying to make this lady take responsibility, in fact because of the way she’s acting I feel that we would be doing a disservice to her as an individual by NOT holding her responsible. Hopefully she’ll learn that it’s not okay to treat people this way and you can’t get away with things by not returning phone calls or making petty excuses.
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