The Accident

     I hear all the time that things happen "for a reason" and I believe it when there's overwhelming evidence it shouldn't and couldn't have happened that way - but it did. This time, it was the case of Adam's accident. He was driving west on the 202 in Mesa when a truck entered by a ramp, cutting off the car in front of Adam. That driver was not paying close enough attention because he panicked. He slammed on his brakes and started swerving all over the road. Adam put his brakes on to slow way down, and had the presence of mind to realize in that instant that he should try to switch lanes to avoid him. The left lane was occupied so he went into the right lane, and even a little beyond into the breakdown lane. It was too late...the car in front of him swerved out of his own lane, into the right lane, and again into the breakdown lane, hitting Adam's car at a 45 degree angle. He hit so hard it totaled the driver's front half of the car and pushed Adam hard into the cement wall on the highway, totaling the passenger's front half of the car, shattering wheels, rims, panels, everything. The transmission got stuck in neutral too, the car basically "shut off" but the key couldn't be removed if not in park, the key was never turned off, so we knew there had to be transmission damage, on top of bent frame, wheels no longer were where they belonged, etc.

     Adam & the driver got out and began to exchange information when 8 police officers from the Dept. of Safety showed up. Because sometimes people get angry in these situations, they immediately separated both drivers, took everyone's information, and handed each back his own paperwork. The other driver was handed some sort of yellow ticket at the scene, skid marks clearly revealing (as well as the angle of the crash) that the other guy was at fault.  Without asking, the officers called a tow truck to take Adam's car, which was not able to be driven, to "the yard".  Adam asked if he could be towed to his house or our usual garage instead and was told, "No."  He then asked if it would take money to get his car back and was again told, "No" since he was not at fault.

     Here's where it gets weird:

     1.  We call our insurance only to find out there's no collision on the car even though we have it on all other cars and always have. Due to an error on their part, it was dropped. This is crazy - about a year ago, Adam was parked at Target working. He came out to find his last car had been hit & totaled. Our insurance company gladly paid to replace it since we had collision. They say we called to drop the car after that, since it was no longer ours. They think what happened was that the rep we talked to said, "No problem."  After we hung up, he may have seen he could NOT drop the car from the policy if the case was technically still OPEN. The only thing he could've done to lower our payment was to drop collision, but keep liability til the case was officially CLOSED. After it was closed, no one dropped it, We thought it already was. No one went back to check. When we added his replacement car (the one in this new accident), we were told it was still on the policy, so they took it off then & added the new car.  When they asked what we wanted covered, we said, "Everything the last one had, we want on this one, since it's just the replacement."  They gave us a new quote and we moved on. Apparently when he looked, he saw just the liability since it looked like we dropped collision (within 1 or 2 days of them declaring it totaled and paying Adam). Adam's had no collision for almost a year and there's no way we could've known or expected it. Especially since everything is online and paperless these days.

     2.  The other guy gave the officer a license and insurance card (required in AZ). Both must have looked legit at the time. Come to find out, there is NO insurance on that vehicle, and he isn't the driver. Our insurance did a check to figure that out (explained in #3) and the driver is a broke renter in a super ghetto neighborhood with no car - and we weren't given the info as to who owns the car - but there is NO insurance on it anyway. Probably, the owner made 1 payment, got a card to look, valid, then never paid the premiums and was dropped.

     3.  The officer wrote ins. info for the other guy. The phone # & company was right, but the policy number was wrong. It wasn't even in the right format for that insurance (3 letters, 7 digits). When we called the insurance company, before we found out the car was uninsured, they had no one by that name or address in their files.

     4.  The officer allowed the other driver to skip date of birth and phone number on the police report, which are the 2 most important pieces of info. we needed to track him down through insurance and to get in touch with him to pay to fix Adam's car.

     5.  We talked to the officer at the scene.  He didn't seem to care the guy gave all false info., apparently fraudulent info to an officer isn't worth his time to chase him, or drive to the guy's house, or check DMV records to contact the owner of the car. When asked about the policy number error he didn't think it was important, and did not take responsibility for it. Also, Adam DID have to pay to get his car out - almost $200 3 days later. He was told by the officers that ins. adjuster would need to see it before we moved it, so we left it til we realized what was going on.

     So the results - Adam's out a $5500 car, no one will pay for it, it's totaled. Even if we could repair it, it would cost as much as the vehicle, or even more, to get it on the road safely and other issues could easily pop up after that. End of story. None of it was his fault. There were errors on the part of every single person involved except Adam, and he's the only one who lost out. The other car was driveable after just changing the tire - probably would never get the repairs done, or just cover it over with a new side panel.

     How could so many things have gone wrong behind the scenes in one split second? It must have been for a reason, although it's hard to figure that out right now. All I know is that we're very thankful Adam was protected in that accident. It could have, and should have, been much, much worse. He walked away without a single scratch, nothing sore, perfectly fine. Thank God for watching over him. Here's a few of the pictures from the accident (the last one shows the car was stuck in neutral & couldn't be shifted, so we know there was transmission damage):