Dannic, The Prince of Cats

Posted by Dannic on April 16th, 2007 in General

For those of you who might care.

Friday was the 13th.  It was a really bad day for me.  It started out good but after work it just went downhill quick.

I was heading to BlockBuster.  Stopped for traffic.  Not far from the left turn lane to get into BlockBuster.  Just happened that something caught my eye in the mirror.  It was the wide eyes of some young 17 year old kid as he realized he was about to run into the back of my truck.  Just let up on the break in hopes that I could give him some extra stopping room when the bugger hit me.

Yep.  My new truck.  Just blasted into the back of my new truck.  He was doing at least 45.  I was stopped.  He was appearntly looking to see if he could change lanes and didn’t realize we had stopped in front of him.  He hit me so hard that I ended up smashing into the vehicle in front of me as well.

The young mother in the car in front of me didn’t even hesitate.  She hopped out of her SUV to check on her kid.  Don’t blame her.  Glad the boy was fine.  The impact woke him up.  That was it.  The rear end of her SUV was destroyed just about.  That can give you a pretty good idea how hard I was hit.

The good thing about all this was no one was hurt.  Just the vehicles.  Two drove away, one didn’t.  Mine was one of the ones that drove away.  I’d have to say one really good thing about my Truck is that it is pretty damn tough.

The front bumper was damaged from hitting the vehicle in front of me.  Mostly paint damage is visible on it but from experience it is much worse than just paint.  Now, the rear of my truck…  Well that’s another story altogether.

Now, my rear bumper did a great job of absorbing the impact.  Did its job great.  Crumpled and pushed up underneath the bed of the truck… Well, if it were a bit softer that probably would have been all but that wasn’t to be.  I have a tow package on the truck so since I have my trailer hitch on the back of the truck it impacted the engine of the Jeep that hit me.  This of course caused all sorts of problems with the frame of my truck.  It just didn’t like the extra pressure and buckled.  In two places.

Anyone who has been in an accident will know that this is not a good thing for a vehicle to do.  Bent frames are bad.  The frame bent just on the axle side of the spring on both sides of the truck.  This caused the truck to sit up a little higher on the tail end.  It also caused the bed to crumple in the middle a little bit.  Hard to see under the bed liner but it is sorta obvious with the hump in the middle of the bed.  Both sides of the bed show creases.  Passenger side more than the driver side.

Wierd thing is that both of my tail lights survived.  The tailgate was damaged the bumper was damaged and the bed of the truck was damaged but the darn tail lights survived.

I wouldn’t have thought of it if I hadn’t had it happen, but my darn CD player doesn’t work anymore either.  Which really kinda sucks when I don’t want to listen to the blather that goes on the radio sometimes.

As far as the kids Jeep.  Well lets just say it is scrap.  The entire front end is mush.  From the bumper to the engine, there isn’t anything that survived.  He didn’t have an airbag and fortunately mine didn’t deploy.

Our vehicles were locked together and his wasn’t starting.  I ended up dragging his out of the road and into the parking lot because his just wasn’t going to move on its own power and the police wanted us out of the road if we could manage it.  No problem. I had a great truck to do that with.

Took a little creative inspiration to figure out how to extricate his truck from mine but we finally managed to get the pin pulled from my hitch.  Once it was pulled we ended up putting his in neutral and rolling forward till I got up some speed where the tow-truck driver slammed on the brakes to the Jeep.  Took a couple of tries but I was at least free.

Now, I am fine.  A bit sore.  No trips to the hospital yet.  If my neck and back don’t start feeling better in a short bit I’ll probably see the doc.  But it probably will be just pulled muscles at the moment.

I am duly impressed with Progressive.  They got me quite a bit of information and in touch with Gieco.  I can’t say I am all that impressed with Gieco.  I had thought about changing over to them but I don’t know that I will after my initial conversation with the adjusters.

Apparently Gieco will assess the damage to your vehicle then right you a check right there.  I am not so certain that I want them to write me a check.  I want my Truck back to its original shape.  Unfortunately, I don’t believe that will happen with the frame being bent.

And, the only time I can get them to even look at my truck is on a Tuesday during working hours.  This is very tough for me to do.  I have to take time off to do this.   It does not make me happy to do.  I can probably just leave it there but I’m afraid I’ll get screwed.  I know for certain they will miss the CD player being broke.  I’ll probably have to argue with them about it.

I’ll let you all know when I talk to them what the deal is.  Right at the moment I’m not recommending anyone have an accident with Gieco as an insurance agent.  On either side.