Taylor and I were involved in a rear end auto accident this evening. Taylor had finished Tae Kwon Do class and we were driving home. The biggest thing on my mind was what to make for supper. Then BOOM! We were hit by the car behind us after coming to a stop at a traffic light. The impact threw the car forward a good 3 or 4 feet, but no serious injury or damage was done. Thank God for seat belts! Taylor had eyes the size of tennis balls, but after I explained what happened and checked her over, she said she was fine. I had to count to 10 before I got out of my car though. I felt like the guy in the cartoon! It's wild what threatening my kid's safety does to my equilibrium.
I've only been in one other car accident in my entire life, but thought I knew what I was doing. I got out of the car, greeted the other driver, made sure that no one was injured and then spent a good 10 minutes getting insurance information and closely looking over the damage to both cars. We both agreed that we didn't think either car had incurred enough damage to warrant a call to the police, so we made final agreements about how to proceed and both drove off.
Well, it seems that car repairs are even more outrageously expensive than I was willing to suppose. One bumper, one muffler and a quarter panel adds up to well over $2 grand. (Insert whistle of disbelief here). I'm lucky the other guy was fully cooperative and our stories matched, or I could possibly have been left footing the bill for anything over the first $1000. Lesson learned!
We take the car in at the beginning of next week for repairs and will get to drive around a brand new rental car for a week. I'm probably a huge dork, but I'm a little excited at driving a brand new car around for a week, even if it's a Ford Focus. I'll just wear my sunglasses and a huge hat whenever I get in it... ;)
Kristin