From the Cradle to the Car Accident
Where are the services that our taxes pay for?
Welcome back everyone! I’m getting back on track this week after a slight interruption.
On Thursday evening, October 19, I was involved in a car accident. Ir’s such an odd phrase - “involved in” since I neither consented nor desired such involvement. To be perfectly plain, some idiot barrelled into me as my partner and I were returned from her volleyball game, rear-ending us on a curve in a construction zone and then fleeing the scene - classic hit and run.
I don’t have a lot of experience with car accidents, just enough. The last car accident I had was 2019, in Connecticut, on a freeway onramp, where someone had stopped at yield sign and I was sandwiched, crashed from behind at high speed and pushed into the stopped car in front of me. Nowhere to go.
Before that, I hadn’t been in a car accident since about 2002. And in my life, I’ve had 5 crashes - except for the first one (read about how I ran a car up a tree the first time I ever drove), I’ve been rear-ended now 4 times. In each case except this last, the police showed up, insurance arranged to see the car, and the car was fixed in a timely manner. There will be no fixing this car.
This experience, however, is more about the failures of the system than any particular successes. Failures are mounting while the successes are minimal.
The Accident
We were on our way home from a volleyball match that my partner played in. I was driving her silver gray 2008 Toyota Corolla with just over 100,000 miles on it. The road had 4 lanes, leading to a construction zone, a large on-going bridge construction project that connects the bridge in Kirkland to I-5. The road has a big sweeping curve in it, with a wonky intersection in the middle of the curve. A sign with a slanted arrow pointing to the upper left was easled onto the roadway followed by cones quickly closing off the right lane. There was only about 50 feet of roadway to merge to a single lane. A traffic light appeared at the end of the construction zone, not even 100 yards away. Cars backed up, waiting to turn left as the road was blocked off and a detour established due to the night time construction.
I drove in the right lane. As I approached the merge arrow sign at the end of the curve about 25 feet past the wonky intersection, I ran out of road and had to merge left. Cars formed a line back from the light, and I had nowhere to go as I slowed my car and checked my mirrors to move over.
In my rearview mirror, I saw the flash of a big black SUV (a Mazda I was told) going SO FAST, leaving only enough time to say “Oh shit!”
We were hit hard, with the back driver’s side taking the brunt of the collision. I hit my head against the headrest, and I was dazed at first, trying to clear my senses to check on my girlfriend and assess our situation. There was a big plume of smoke behind me, and I was slow to exit the car.
As I got out, the black SUV was backing away amid the smoke screen, I thought, naively enough, to pull off into the little side street from the intersection to get out of the flow of traffic. Did I need to pull my car over more? Did I need to get off the road myself? Was I supposed to stay with my vehicle? What is protocol? I didn’t want to tie up traffic, but I also didn’t want to change the scene of the accident so whoever investigated could determine what happened.
None of these questions came into play. I was stopped right where the construction cones started in the right lane, next to the merge arrow sign, still standing on its easel.
As I exited the car, I saw the black SUV take off down the side street. I heard someone yell from a small car, “we’ve got this, we’ll be back” as they followed the SUV.
I got my girlfriend out of the car and we stepped to the curb. I took a couple of the construction cones and put them behind the vehicle to provide a buffer between the oncoming cars and the accident. Standing on the sidewalk, I watched car after car speed around that curve in the right lane only to find the lane immediately stop and see just how quickly those speeding cars had to stop to avoid hitting the merging traffic ahead of it.
My head pounded and I was slightly queasy and dizzy.
We called 911 and stated our emergency. We were told that an officer wasn’t immediately available but to wait.
And that’s when all the failures of this incident mounted, rising up in the air like Mt. Rainier 100 miles to the south.
THE FAILURES
1. Police or other emergency vehicles didn’t show up
My girlfriend called 911. She said we weren’t hurt. Dispatch told her they would send the next available officer. We waited. And waited. And waited. After almost an hour, I called 911 to find out what was going on. I was told that there were still no available officers, and they couldn’t say when one would be available. We waited some more, and some more. It was early evening. The accident had occurred shortly after 7:00pm, and the chilly October night air in the PNW descended on us like a cold blanket. My girlfriend wore a light t-shirt and shorts that she had been wearing while playing volleyball. I only had a light sweatshirt on.
I called 911 again and asked if they were going to send someone and they said “no.” (Thanks for telling us!). They said we didn’t need to stay at the scene. If the other party had stayed there, they would have an officer come out, but since it was a hit and run, we could file a report over the phone.
“Will the police help arrange for the tow?” I check the car to see if it was driveable. It was not. The back bumper and fender were accordioned tightly into the rear driver’s side tire. The wheel wouldn’t spin. “No, you have to arrange for a tow yourself.”
Since I was the driver, my partner didn’t have her license/ID with her nor her AAA information.
Every other accident I ever had, police showed up, a tow truck was dispatched if necessary, the police surveyed the scene and took down information from all parties involved, provided some guidance and some safety measures until the scene could be cleared from the roadway. We waited for the service that we pay for with our taxes. Evidently, that money is being used for something else.
2. Construction Zone
We spent two hours standing in the chilly night air, nursing our increasingly sore necks (I battled a headache, wondered if I was concussed, moved slowly). As we stood, construction workers came to us, seemingly to check on us. “Are you okay?”
Then one by one several construction workers surveyed the scene. One actually said to me, “Yeah, we get in trouble with traffic control all the time, so we have to make sure the cones are set up properly, you know, CYA.”
We watched for two hours as car after car stopped quickly after the curve when the roadway merge and our car stood with its headlights and flashers on.
Then, one elderly construction worker, sighing and shaking his head, took the easled sign with the arrow pointing to the upper left and moved it from its current position to behind our car, about 30 feet before the cones, closer to the curve, closer to the corner where another sign pointed to divert pedestrian traffic away from the closed sidewalk of the construction zone.
It became increasingly clear that this zone was not set up properly. The merge was too quick, occurring after the intersection, with not enough warning time to really merge without stopping or severely slowing down at the edge of the curve.
But there would be no police officer to see this situation. I took pictures with my phone.
3. AAA to the rescue? Not so fast
To be fair, AAA responded rather quickly, and the tow-truck driver was kind and helpful.
As newer residents to Seattle, we don’t have a mechanic. We don’t know any bodyshops. And the closest AAA-affiliated body repair place was too far away. We’d need to get the car to a location near enough to our residence so we could get home and also get back to the car when we needed to the next day.
We randomly chose a bodyshop nearest our house, but there was limited parking available.
The tow truck driver explained that that particular body shop was not a AAA-affiliated repair shop and would probably not touch that car. They’d want the car removed. You could leave a car on the street in Seattle for 72 hours before risking having it ticketed and impounded. But, he said, the car is probably totalled, so they really just need to look at it and sign off on it for the insurance company.
“The problem is,” the tow truck driver explained, “that collision centers have no capacity for tow-ins, and are about 3 months behind, booking for space in January.”
In other words, there would be no place to put the car.
We thought of other options and on the drive to the body repair shop, we changed our mind and thought of a side street near our apartment complex out of the way from street traffic where we could park it until we figured out what we could do with it.
Almost two hours of standing on the side of the road, getting increasingly colder and increasingly more frustrated with the lack of response from the police, we had the tow truck driver drop the car on a residential street near our complex. On the drive, he explained how Seattle has gone to shit, and that the neighborhood we live in is riddled with crime caused by halfway and transitional housing.
(We actually do live next to newly-constructed transitional housing, the property backed up to the busy childcare center of our apartment complex. A shattered vehicle (windows looked like they’d beeen smashed out with a baseball bat or tire iron and slashed tires) sat at the edge of our complex on the street, near where we walk our dog, and we caught the story one day from a man who explained what happened as a woman in the transitional housing creepily watched from a couple hundred yards away, sneaking looks at us as we talked to the man. Transitional housing is necessary - however, in this case, the location is suspect. Why building transitional housing next to a student/family housing facility associated with the university, especially one with many young children? Evidently, building zoning is an issue in Seattle as well.
4. A Call to the Police
Once we - finally - returned home, I called the police to make my report. They asked very few questions, only requesting the barest of information about the accident. The officer gave me his name and case number and told me to reference that case number to the insurance company.
I was ready to tell the story: about the botched construction zone, the lack of emergency personnel response, the hit and run, but he wanted very little information, just the barest of details. Obviously, the officer wasn’t into the finer points of detailed writing.
5. The Insurance Company
The next morning, suffering from whiplash, my partner made phone calls to the insurance company and to find a place to take the car to. A woman at the insurance company at first told her that her policy didn’t have roadside assistance since she had AAA, and that it would cost a lot of money to get the car towed. AAA only provides one free tow per incident, and we used that to get the car out of the road and to a street near our home. The insurance company clerk tried to reroute the call, and my girlfriend was sent back to the initial intake menu. Time to start over.
The second clerk explained that the first clerk was wrong. This had nothing to do with roadside assistance. The tow to a collision yard would be covered since it’s part of the claim. But finding a collision yard was up to us. My partner started making calls and lucked upon one nearby that said they’d take the car that very day. The insurance company set up an immediate tow and we followed in our other car - heading for the grocery store after dropping off the car to load up on comfort foods for the long restful weekend (and more) of recovery.
So now the car sits in a body repair shop parking lot, waiting for a claims adjuster to rule on the car.
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THE SUCCESSES
1. Good Samaritans
I was dazed by the collision. It took me a few moments to check on my partner, retrieve her phone from beneath my feet, and to check the traffic to see if it was safe to get out of the car. I saw the other vehicle through the smoke, backing up and going into the side street, presumably, I thought, to get out of the flow of traffic. (S/He) had other intentions.
A very small car followed and I heard, “we’ve got this, we’ll be back.” I didn’t know what to make of that. We stood on the curb, calling 911 and trying to figure out if we were okay, if we needed medical attention, and what we needed to do next. I was always told to move vehicles out of the flow of traffic if needed but to stay with the vehicle until help arrives.
The couple returned and introduced themselves - Nehemiah and Ivy. They were a young couple. They explained that they had been in a hit and run accident on the 405 freeway a year and a half before and that it was an absolute nightmare. They saw smoke billowing from the other car, and then saw them taking off and knew they wanted to help.
They went after the car, took a picture of the license plate and of the car that was fleeing, and returned to airdrop the pictures to my phone and to give me their contact information.
They were on the way to NICU, where their 8-day old baby was, healthy except that it didn’t want to eat. They obviously didn’t have to stop to help total strangers, but we’re very glad they did.
GOLD STAR for going above and beyond to Nehemiah and Ivy. Some slight resurgence of hope in humanity emerged from the darkness.
2. Many people stopped to ask if we were okay
We stood on that corner for 2 hours waiting for help to arrive. It was early in the evening, between 7 and 9pm. It was a busy street in a construction zone in a residential district.
Walkers and bikers checked in “are you okay? Do you need help?” “Thank you, we’re fine, we’re waiting for the police” (who… never showed, did I say that?)
We’ve heard of the Seattle Freeze, new Seattlites having trouble making friends by the cold natives of the PNW. But we haven’t experienced it. We experienced A re-New(ed) Hope (yes, Obi-wan!) and faith in humanity and our fellow PNWers.
3. Two first-rate tow truck drivers
We had the car towed to a street near our house on the night of the accident. The tow truck driver was professional, kind, and helpful. We explained the procedures, the pros and cons of leaving a car near a body shop, and he helped us get the car home.
The second tow truck driver was younger, happy and energetic. He towed the car to the body shop where it will be appraised (and likely totalled).
Both men were exceptionally kind and friendly, with a disposition that calms nerves in a tense and fraught situation.
THANK YOU tow truck drivers. I wish I had gotten their names.
4. Found a collision repair shop rather easily (and luckily)
The first tow truck driver was correct. Many of the collision yards were filled up and had wait times extending into January and February of 2024.
As my partner was sorting out the details on the phone with the insurance company, trying to navigate finding a yard without long wait times with the fact that cars are impounded from the street after 72 hours, one clerk asked “do you have a friend whose yard you can park the car in for a while?”
What? What kind of service is that? Shouldn’t the insurance company be helping sort this out? What kind of asinine suggestion is that - “hey, good friend of mine, can I park my undriveable crashed vehicle eyesore in your yard for an extended (and potentially indefinite) time period until I can get a spot in a collision yard?”
I wouldn’t ask a friend for that (unless they lived in the country and had a lot of land and a place out of the way to hide the car). And I find it highly unprofessional for an insurance company agent to even suggest such a thing. What are we paying insurance for?
Fortunately, hope beyond hope, it only took two phone calls to find a body shop nearby that could take in the car. They were quiet and polite as well, ready to help with the next stage of the vehicle asseessment by the insurance adjuster.
5. Urgent Care
My partner’s neck continued to hurt into Saturday, a day and a half after the collision. My own is sore (and getting sorer as I write). She was able to secure an urgent care appointment for Saturday morning.
There wasn’t anything special about urgent care. They declared her injuries “classic whiplash,” explained what pain relievers to use and gave her a neck brace with instructions not to lift weights ( my partner is a power lifter - rawr!) for a week. Getting her to do anything she doesn’t want to do for a day let along a week is a monumental undertaking. She is not to lift anything. She is to rest. She is to wear her brace - all things she has already ignored to some degree. But her neck is painful enough that she’s following the orders more rather than less.
I’ve taken on cleaning and meal duties while she rests, and we’re spending time relaxing, reading, and watching some shows. Of course, she’s doing school work and I’m writing and reading.
It was a sensible precaution to go to urgent care, and hopefully the recovery process is swift. But I have my doubts. I’ve heard stories of people getting whiplash and being rear-ended and having serious complications for years.
I’m prone to a stiff neck and my neck cracks frequently, along with my jaw, 40 years of suffering with a TMJ problem. Following the accident, my neck and jaw seemed stable, none of the usual cracking and popping, as if the accident miraculously lined up the bones and righted all the wrongs with my body.
Now, a few days after the collision, I’m started to feel more pain and the cracking is returning. I’ll monitor it well and head to urgent care if my symptoms grow significantly or considerably worse.
6. We are okay - we didn’t die!
“But did you die?” We didn’t. But that doesn’t mean we would get in line to ride this ride again.
At this stage, we feel fortunate. I still see the flash in the rearview mirror of exactly how fast the SUV was going as it hit us. We were lucky. It could have been much worse.
As we stood on the corner and watched car after car speed around the corner and stop so quickly because of the merged lanes and the cars lined up at the traffic light at the construction zone, we saw just how dangerous that corner is.
With so many people not paying attention when they drive - distracted driving is an epidemic that kills - it is a wonder we didn’t witness more accidents just standing there. As we waited, we stepped back from the roadway several times, feeling too close to impending doom.
It’s not our time. We’re here. We will get through this. We will heal.
We Have Questions
What’s next? Will the police investigate the hit-and-run? After all, the good samaritans did provide us with a license plate number and photos. Will the insurance company go after them to recoup their losses?
Will our injuries heal quickly, or will we face some debilitating injuries for some time? Will our injuries get worse before they get better? My partner seems to have gotten the worst of it, despite her fitness, but I’m not in the clear yet. I’ll continue to monitor my neck pain over this week and determine what needs to be done.
Will the car be totaled?
Will we have to get a personal injury lawyer, or jump into the difficulty of a lawsuit? Was the construction zone improperly set up? It seems to be considering how the construction workers at the site acted and how they actually changed the signage as we stood there, our car crippled in the roadway. One worker took the merge arrow sign placed 20 feet in front of our car and moved it to 40 feet behind our car. Why? Because our wrecked car was blocking the sign, or because it had been misplaced to begin with?
Will we get answers?
For now - as it is always - we will exist day by day, witnesses to the failures and successes of a life as the structures of society that we could previously rely on seemingly breakdown around us.
If you’ve had a serious car accident that you wish to share with us, please feel free to comment below. If you have any experience that you think will help us navigate this situation, I welcome your comments.
Be well!
I have written a memoir and am currently querying to seek traditional publication. Please consider supporting my writing with either a free or paid subscription. You can also buy a gift subscription for a friend or loved one. Every little bit helps!
I write about:
writing, literature, and the writing life
writing process
memoir craft
mental illness - major depressive disorder, suicide, borderline personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder
sailing
alternative lifestyles - polyamory and kink
Until next time, I’ll . . ..
Just keep writing!
As always, thank you for reading. Comments are appreciated. Let me know what you think. Let’s get to know each other. All the best!
Sorry to hear about these trials, Lee, and glad everyone is OK.
No where is safe, but when I experience Seattle highways they
only conjure up automobile Armageddon.