If there's a God in heaven, He's got a silver thunderbird

[rolanni]

When last we saw Our Heroine, she was sitting down on the couch in the Confusion Factory living room, a large orange cat on her lap, vibrating, and her ereader open to Conflict of Honors.

Outside, it was a beautiful, sunny, cold Maine day, and the across-the-street neighbor had decided to trim up her driveway, which is almost directly across from our driveway.  She was using an outsize pickup truck fitted with a plow.  As one does, and it must be said that she was not expert, but you don't have to be expert in Maine to use your own private pickup truck in your own private driveway to do whatever you want to do with either.

Our Heroine read one page, two pages, three. . .

And from outside there came an enormous cacophony, metal screaming and a truck engine revving and tires skidding on snow.

Steve got to the kitchen door first.

"She hit your car!"

The next thing Our Heroine knew was that she was in the driveway, boots on, coat unzipped, looking at the smashed remains of Kineo the Wonder Subaru.

We shall pass lightly over the next few hours, while we waited for the Winslow policeman to arrive and file the accident report, and the several phone conversations with our insurance company, and come to rest in the early morning of Martin Luther King Day (in America), where Our Heroine has already called Charlie's Collision Center (Certified Subaru Repair Facility) and achieved a promise from one Doug to send a tow truck.

It is my belief that Kineo is totaled.  I am not a mechanic.  Certainly, one is in receipt of a Very Strong Hint from our insurance company that so new a car ought not to be totaled.  However, I can see a bent frame, and the fact that the radiator has been pushed back into the engine, kicked to the right, and down.  We shall see what Charlie's Collision says.

In the meanwhile, since I'm going through my insurance company, and we do not have rental car on our insurance, they've been steadfast in saying that they cannot give us a rental car.  Fair enough.  I will make another call this morning to find if, since this bill will eventually go to the plow truck driver's insurance company, if I cannot make arrangements to get a rental and have them reimburse me.

In other news, Steve has a really nasty cold. . .and it's snowing.

Today's blog title brought to you by Marc Cohn, "Silver Thunderbird."  Here's your link.

For the Facebook peeps, a picture of Sprite, being elegant.

Comments

[catlinye-maker.livejournal.com]

Oh no! I'm sorry to hear this. Is Maine a no-fault state? Cause it seems the fault is clear and your insurance company shouldn't care since the money will come from hers?

Hearing someone plow always makes me twitchy, when we lived in the snow zone our parked cars were hit more than once by people trying to plow or trying to get unstuck.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

I am not liking this saga. Hope you get better news on the rental . . .

[reedrover]

Oh no! I'm glad people are ok (Steve's cold aside) but yikes that is scary!

[kk1raven.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry about your car. I hope your neighbor has good insurance and this gets dealt with in a speedy and fair fashion.

[mothadventures.livejournal.com]

I'm not up on current Maine insurance regulations, but it may be possible for you to claim against the *plow driver's* insurance for the cost of a rental car. It may also be possible to claim against your homeowners and get some expenses covered, but that can be risky in terms of potential rate increases. I would discuss these options with your insurance *agent* first (if you purchased through an agent instead of direct-purchase from the insurance company). Sometimes the *agent* is more on your side than the corporation itself, or the *claims* folks, are. (When my folks were in Maine they found this especially true.)

It may be helpful to have a copy of the police report, or at least it's reference number or date/time of filing -- because in some cases the fact that you have front-end damage and she has rear-end damage means the presumption is that *you* are at fault. Clearly, the fact that you were parked on your property overrides that - but sometimes your word that you were parked is not as valued as the word of a law enforcement agency saying the exact same thing.

If you are borderline between repair and totaling, it may be worth asking the shop to dig deeper to be sure there isn't hidden damage. My friend's car had front-end damage, and once they dug in they found more and more stuff, but since insurance had paid to start the work they continued even though it would have been totaled if they had found everything up-front. But each time some new damage was found, work had to stop until the insurance folks re-authorized. It took close to two months for her to get her car back (and the rental insurance coverage did run out during that time....)

Having a car totaled, bad as it sounds, is sometimes a better choice. If it's totaled you can start to look for a replacement right away. If it's being repaired you are likely to be without a car for weeks, at best.

[6-penny.livejournal.com]

Is this the same neighbor that buried your mailbox yesterday?

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

hope that the Subaru woes end up in a positive ....

at least you didnt actually see it happen, that makes it worse.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

New, old, cars smash up just the same. -_- Sorry to hear about your car woes, hope your insurance gets their head together and realizes that paying out and keeping you as a customer is better than having you Write Advising People Not To Use Them!

[bandicoot.livejournal.com]

Not fun. Hope you thought to take lots of pics when it first happened. And you can always sue her for whiplash! Ummmm ... :)

[melita66.livejournal.com]

If you do get an rental car authorized, please double-check for how long they'll authorize it. I got burned once by my own insurance company even with rental car coverage because they authorized for 3 days--the length of time the repair "should" take in their estimation, even we had to wait on parts, etc.

[attilathepbnun.livejournal.com]

Oh Great Ghu ---- Kineo!!!!! Poor car!! foully assassinated in its own driveway!!!
*offers calming tea*

At least the poor vehicle was the only victim. I hope insurance matters go well ---- and Steve's col gets better ---both quickly!

[elbales]

Egad. So sorry for the trouble. I'm glad no one was hurt. Best wishes for a good resolution on the rental situation and for Steve's prompt recovery from the Crud.

Bent frame

[od-mind.livejournal.com]

I am not an expert, but for me "bent frame" = "totaled". It's a great opportunity to give the remains to a local high school auto shop, so that they can try out that frame-straightener they seldom get to use, and you can write off the residual value as a charitable donation. But you don't want to be driving it after that, resilient though Subarus tend to be.

[adina-atl.livejournal.com]

Ugh. I'm so sorry, but so glad no one was inside the car when it happened. You are correct that a bent frame tends to be fatal.

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

I'd be willing to bet that the actuarial tables don't have age of car related to totaled by a neighbor's snowplow. Matter of fact, I think I can pretty well guarantee that this type of accident is totally unrelated to the age of the car. Minutes from the dealer floor, or years, when the neighbor crunches it, the tree falls on it, or any other random accident -- it's going to happen. I think your insurance company needs to check their thinking. There is no age of car relationship here.

Perhaps you could suggest they do an experimental test. Take a new car, a year old car, and perhaps a few older cars, and have someone drive a snowplow into each of them. I predict that even a brand new car will suffer the same catastrophic consequences. I will admit that it is possible that coming smart cars might be able to dodge, but so far, all they are going to do is sit there.