I had just completed a seminar presentation at the business center at Michigan State University in East Lansing on business entity legal considerations and was heading back to the office this afternoon to get some work done and then start a relaxing weekend.
It was not to be.
At the corner of Hagadorn and Mt. Hope, minding my own business, stopped completely at a red light with a grey Nissan Titan truck to my front and nothing behind me, relaxing after a fun but involved presentation, looking ahead at the lights, waiting for them to change and wa-bam!
The RAV4 was struck from behind, hard enough that it was pushed forward to hit the truck in front of me even as I was on the breaks.
I had a very weird feeling as it happened, watching my car moving closer to the truck - I clearly remember thinking "What the heck is happening, my car is moving forward and I'm on the brake, what the hell?"
Not a pleasant feeling.
And this was the result:
Ouch. In addition, my left pinky finger feels sprained or something and hurts like a bugger. I'm not sure how it happened as both hands were on the wheel at the moment of impact. The back is also sore but the neck is fine so far.
In addition to mine, he managed to make his car not look too good either:
Interestingly, there was no damage to the Titan visible, but my front bumper had some grey marks on it and one of the plastic things popped out and I shoved it back into place.
It turns out that the fellow wasn't paying attention, had looked behind him to talk to his kid, saw the cars in the lane next to him move and must have just hammered the gas pedal. The problem of course was that that lane was the left turn lane and it was moving on a green arrow!
Thankfully the kid was unhurt because he was properly buckled up in a booster seat, so the guy is not a complete moron. Nice fellow, very apologetic and was kinda shaken and shocky over the whole incident.
The lady whose truck my car taped was also a decent sport about it and was impressed her truck had no damage and the front of my car only a bit considering the impact we both felt. Given the extensive damage I called the police and about a half hour later the Meridian Township Police officer arrived, got everyone's data and heard everyone's statements and went to write his report. Good and courteous fellow. So we got an accident report out of it and the guy was cited, I believe for careless driving. Happily, the RAV was still drivable so I drove it homeward and called my friend who owns a collision shop and I dropped it off there and it now awaits the adjuster's assessment. That's a non-preferred way of starting a weekend off with a bang. It's also the second frickkin time I've been minding my own business stopped at a red light and I get rear ended by someone not paying attention. I'm beginning to wonder if inattentive drivers are mistaking the spare tire cover for a target marker. Sheesh.
2 comments:
I hope you got a picture of the driver and car at the scene. I got rear-ended like that a couple of summers ago and the driver left the scene. I got the tag and they tracked her down, but because I couldn't identify her, they couldn't get her for leaving the scene.
Yep, but the driver in this case stayed at the scene, and I got pictures of him, his plate and his insurance card just in case I wrote any of his information down wrong.
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