Smooshed Car :(
So my car got a bit smooshed last week, coming home from the gym. *sigh*. Coming home, turning into my driveway and either I didn’t look hard enough, or the guy behind me was going way too fast, but I turned and I suddenly hear this screen and a thump as he hits me on the front right left quarterpanel. Basically caved in the body and gave a good scrape on the door (crappy cell phone picture included). Everyone was ok thankfully, mostly it’s just going to be my pride and my pocketbook that’s hurt, as app
arently ICBC has “special” rules for turning into a driveway which essentially says that if you’re the one turning into the driveway, you’re at fault. The guy on the phone told me that the best I could hope for was 75% at fault, the other guys’ skid 20′ of skid marks aside. Luckily of course this is what insurance is for, but sadly the 11 years of safe driving means nothing, or next to nothing (so much for the “one free accident” thing I heard about). So I lose some discount on my insurance (the suck when a “sports” car like mine has such high premiums to begin with), pay some money over 3 years (not sure what’s up with that), and of course it goes on my insurance record. Or at least it’ll be something like that, I have yet to hear from them with any official word. Course, when you have a monopoly in the province, it seems there’s not a lot you can do but some bitching and whining 🙁
Check into actually paying for the repair yourself. That way ICBC doesn’t ding you and (if’n I recall correctly) it doesn’t go on your record. Of course, that depends on the actual cost of said repair.
Aye…. also of course if the cost of the repair ($1500+ IIRC) is more or less than the ding over time (and of course if my bank account can take the hit all at once). I believe that I get to tell them what I want to do when they come down with the “here’s how much we’re screwing you over for” letter/phonecall/whatever.