At about 4:45 this morning my husband and I woke up out of a deep sleep by a loud crash. I had a gut feeling it was one of our cars and ran outside in my pajamas and bare feet to find this young guy in his little red car trying to turn around in our neighbor’s driveway and drive away. I ran and stood in front of his car. No way was some drunk idiot going to smash our car and leave.
As I stood there the picture began to fill in more. It wasn’t one car, it was both. And he had hit my husband’s Jeep Cherokee so hard that it was on top of my Subaru Tribeca. Both cars look like they’ve been attacked by a monster with a can opener. After awhile I realized my feet hurt. I was standing in bare feet on frozen ground covered in broken glass.
The police came right away, several of them, and the guy failed the field sobriety test horribly. Then I watched as an officer pulled a bag of pot out of his car. There was a passenger in the back seat with a pretty nasty gash on his head who was taken away by an ambulance. They arrested the driver.
When Dave and I decided to try to have a baby, I had two daughters already and knew we would need a car with a third row. I wanted to invest in something really solid that I could pay off and keep for years, so I bought a Subaru. We take lots of road trips, so I got something the kids would enjoy spending time in. It’s by far the nicest vehicle I’ve ever owned and I felt really good that I could provide it for my family.
I’ve been paying on it for the last 3 years and now it’s gone. And because I quit my longtime career to open a store, I’m sure I don’t look like I’m very loan-worthy on paper. I doubt anyone will give a new car loan to a self-employed shop keeper. I don’t know…maybe they will. Right now I’m just assuming the worst.
The guy who hit our cars had no proof of insurance and the police haven’t said anything to the contrary yet, so I’m guessing it turned out that he doesn’t have any.
Awesome. Drunk driver, bag of weed in his car, no insurance (so far). And my husband and I, who did nothing wrong, are left with no car between us. I’m not sure what we’ll do. I suppose we’ll figure that out as more pieces fall into place. I know that the insurance will pay off the amount remaining on the loan. I have coverage, so at least I won’t be paying on a car that’s totaled, if it is totaled, and I can’t imagine it’s not. But at the end of the day, I’ve paid for 3 years on a car and have ended up with nothing to show for it because of a drunk @#$hole. If the drunk has insurance, at least something will come from Dave’s Jeep.
Of course there are silver linings. No one was killed. No one was in our cars. They didn’t hit anyone else. But please pardon me if I indulge in a little sadness that we drew this bummer card.
It sucks.
A heartfelt thank you to the gracious officers who arrived at the scene along with our local firefighters and EMT crew. They were there within 2 minutes of the collision and were all over it.
Update 3/15/13: Turns out the driver of the car is not the owner of the car, so that will either make this more of a hairball or at least maybe he’ll have proof of insurance. Fingers crossed.
The drunk driver hit Dave’s Jeep so hard that it smashed into mine all the way up to the windshield of my Subaru.
The response by the local police and fire departments was amazing.
Dave’s car on top of my car.
Looking down at the hood of my Subaru.
