A Day Without a Car. Back to Normal.

[canyonwalker]

Monday was a day without a car. Well, so were Saturday and Sunday and part of Friday. I didn't notice us temporarily being a one-car family over the weekend since we did mostly take it easy. On Monday, though, it hit me when I made (solo) plans to go out for lunch, walked down the stairs, and realized... there's no car in the garage!

The car was in a garage, just not ours. It was at the shop... where it had been for 10 days while the insurance company dragged its corporate feet. Actually, counting the weekend and Monday it was up to 13 days.

Solo lunch wasn't hard. I simply changed my plans to walk out to a restaurant 0.6 miles away. And while I was eating I got good news: my car was ready to pick up. (some_other_dave  gave me a ride later in the day to get it.) While that was good news it also pissed me off again because it put back into sharp relief how much foot-dragging the insurance company had done. They caused my car to sit, unusable, for nearly two weeks. Once they gave the green light to go forward the shop fixed it in half a day.

Money-wise, at least insurance agreed to pay for the repairs, less a $500 deductible. The damage, which was caused by a road hazard, is officially recorded as "Driver hit stationary object," though. That's gonna jack my rates for the next few years. 😡

Comments

[kjn]

That shows the dangers of using a classification system intended for one purpose for another purpose. "Driver hit stationary object" sounds like something that could be in a medical classification system, like ICD (though it does not currently contain such a thing). It sounds like a terrible category for say a register of road accidents or incidents.