Car Drama Continues

Just realized that I hadn’t followed up the car drama post with any updates here; though I have been talking to some of you in person about things.

So, the accident. Michelle was driving to work when she reached the intersection of 4th Ave SE & 10th St. She had a green light; so she was continuing through intersection when another driver pulled out right in front of her. Michelle had no change to stop and crashed into the side of the other vehicle. Michelle’s airbag deployed and she was badly shaken up. ES took her to the ER where they have her some pain killers[ref]Though she said they weren’t good enough[/ref] and ran a battery of tests[ref]Blood work, x-rays, CT scans, etc…[/ref]. First and most important, Michelle is fine. All the tests came back good; heck the doc even commented on how strong her bones were. 🙂

We’ve been in talks with our insurance company since the accident trying to get everything sorted out. As the accident happened so close to our purchase of the vehicle; not all of the paperwork had gone out everywhere; which caused some confusion[ref]For example, the towing company had a hard time figuring out which ruined vehicle was ours. :([/ref]. Another problem we’ve had is people, who initially stopped to make sure Michelle was ok, didn’t stick around once ES arrived and they didn’t leave any contact information. This means there aren’t any witnesses to the accident and as there aren’t any traffic cameras on that intersection; it’s Michelle’s word vs. the other driver’s. As you might expect, the other driver is claiming they had the green light.

In any case, our insurance company has declared the Tucson a total loss. Thanks to some advice from a good friend[ref]Hi Kim![/ref], we asked for (and received) an itemized breakdown of how the insurance company was calculating the value of our Tucson. After looking it over we found it didn’t include all of the feature on the Tucson; fortunately when we bought the vehicle, it came with the original dealer’s sticker. I scanned a copy of that and emailed the documentation over. Today our claim handler called me back to say based on the documentation we provided them that they were increasing the valuation by about $650.

For a car this expensive, that’s not much but it should be enough that we won’t owe anything on the auto-loan (once all the paperwork clears) and we might even have a little bit for a down payment on a replacement vehicle. Unfortunately, our insurance company won’t pay anything to help offset the warranty we purchased with the Tucson; but they suggested talking to the dealership to see if they’ll return some of those funds on a pro-rated basis[ref]We also plan to try working with the dealership; so if that doesn’t work out, maybe they’ll be able to transfer the warranty to whatever replacement vehicle we end up with.[/ref].

Though there’s still the open question of how the insurance company[ref]The other driver was insured by the same company as we are, which may streamline some of the paperwork but I wonder if the end result will be good or bad for us.[/ref] will assign/handle the liability for the accident. Given that to the best of our knowledge, no witnesses have come forward and there’s no camera footage; that’s still a bit troubling.

For some extra …. fun, Michelle had been having a bad cough since the accident. On Friday she was having some trouble breathing; so we made another trip the ER. Interesting medical fact: Car accidents can make you more prone to infections, including lung infections; also pneumonia is a very opportunistic infection.

Yup, Michelle managed to catch pneumonia. They gave her some more drugs and she’s doing much, much better now[ref]The cough is almost entirely gone and the bruises from the car accident have also begun to fade.[/ref]. Still on the bright side, we’ve got excellent friends who’ve all been exceedingly kind and helped us out in all kinds of ways since the accident. So many, many thanks to all you[ref]And I’ll try to keep the car drama posts better updated from here on out.[/ref]!

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