Said Goodbye Today

Today's cars are infinitely safer so far as protecting the passengers, but, proportionately, today's drivers are, for the most part, way more reckless, and more importantly, more distracted than yesterday's. One step forward, two steps back. I am grateful to no one was seriously hurt!!

 

We do have a lawyer, the man said our brake lights were not working. I know they did, I checked them before we left to avoid a ticket… (they pull you over for anything at the cruise) Although we were at a red light on a three lane highway with 20 other cars stopped with us.

We didn’t get a rental, the guys insurance agent forgot about the claim.
I do body work for a living and I do believe he was going way faster than 35, we heard his tires like he tried to stop, and when he got stopped he was in front of the truck that we hit. However my wagon was not perfect underneath, it came from up north and was covered in rust. You couldn’t see that from the outside so I took it to car shows. As far as brakes, drivetrain, and suspension all that was replaced and very sound. In the one picture you can see it knocked the engine sideways. We hit a 80’s model F150, it didn’t do anything to it. I agree that we lived despite the car, if he would have hit us directly it would have been MUCH worse. The side that crumpled is the side my stepdaughter usually sits on, but she wasn’t with us luckily. My one year old was in the middle in the back it knocked her car seat sideways to the passenger side, and my husband’s seat broke and he was lying where my one year old should have been. She wasn’t hurt at all, the noise scared her and she cried.

As far as the nickname, I use to race dirt track and my father gave me that name. This is the only major accident I’ve been in.

 

In the first place, the Fox chassis cars were the first cars entirely designed by computer at Ford, and benefitted from the early crumple-zone engineering produced by the engineers. The 1979 Mustang, at that time, was the safest automobile sold back then as found by Consumer's Union. Fast-forward to now in order to realize that we now have monstrous dunderheads currently plying our streets and highways in modified trucks and cars that subvert the very laws that help make those new cars that much safer. I've seen cars from the last ten years involved in collisions literally torn into pieces by modified trucks, by speeding @$$holes and by selfish d!ckheads who just cannot wait three more seconds for the car with the right-of-way to drive by before they pull out. I would venture to say, if the poster had been driving a Magnum wagon instead of the Fairmont wagon, the damage would've been very nearly the same.

 

idk if i mentioned that this was done by a two door s10 blazer/jimmy....

 

Our son had a similar GMC of that same type. His left front brake hung up and he went into the mediun then across two lanes into a small ditch. It bent the roof and ruined that little car. So I suppose it doesn't take much.

 

It looks like the car did pretty damn well overall, considering it appears all four doors can still be opened and closed, and the seats didn't lean back 45* like I've seen in the past. The guy that him this car had to have been doing 55-60 when he hit the brakes. I've been rear-ended at 35 mph in a similar sized car, without nearly that amount of damage.

 

There was an accident in a town close to me, where a Mustang, sitting waiting at a red light, was run over the driver's side with the right steer tire on a logging truck! And the reason why I remembered this? When Patrick mentioned the doors on the wagon, I remembered that the Mustang's driver's door still opened, even though there was a furrow from the back of the hatch, down the rear quarter and across the door; the Mustang even flipped the truck like a cheese omlette!

 

When it happened only the two front doors opened, but when we went to clean it out only the passenger doors opened. I guess from the wrecker loading and unloading it.

 

When that happened to me in 1987 with a 68 belair wagon I had the towing company move it to my house right away and paid for the tow and 1 day storage myself. It took the insurance company a couple of months to settle. I am sure the storage fee would have been high. I settled for 3 times what I paid for the car( back then $2850) and got to keep the remains(sold it for $200). These lots can charge very high fees for storage assuming the insurance company will pay.

 

Storage fees are a big bugaboo for auto insurance companies. If the appraisers and other claim handlers are not sharp, they can cause the overall cost of claims to rise very sharply. It's important not to just let a crashed vehicle 'sit' at a tow lot after an accident. When I first got into the business, I found out that $10/day starts up real fast. In my early days, I lost track of a couple, and management wasn't too pleased to be paying out a few hundred extra.....

Now, at $30/day or more, plus towing charges, you could easily have charges exceeding the value of the car in a few weeks.

 

The tow depends on who and how the call goes out. Whereas an accident tow here in Washington can be up to $40/day, if the State Patrol calls in for an impound, even for a highway accident, they can run at least twice that, simply because that's how the state law was written. It's utter crap, but until the law's changed, there's nothing we can do about it.

 

I'm guessing some police officers and departments have favorite impound yards who give them a kick back. But that's illegal!

 

No, the law was written that tow companies had to be vetted by the State Patrol, and they're on a rotation. So if they're stupid enough to allow kickbacks, they deserve to get caught.

 

Yeah, a lot of jurisdictions now use a rotation schedule for impound / police tows. It's a lot of business, and the rotation among several tow companies allows competition and spreads the wealth around.

Los Angeles doesn't use it though - each police division has one 'contract' tow yard - worth millions to the tow company owner who has it.