September 22nd, 2008 by Kieran K. Meadows
The silver Subaru had been parked -- upon impact two tons of vehicle moved five feet onto the sidewalk
Early Sunday morning I woke up early to get a head start on my reading. Forty-five minutes later, I heard a loud screech and then a BOOM!– then a car alarm … Car accident … I could tell the sound came from my block, right in front. When I looked out the window, I saw that one of the vehicles had smashed my parents’ parked car, which was now at least five feet up on the sidewalk. After hustling to get dressed, I grabbed my notebook and press pass, and then I ran out the front door. Suddenly, I was reporting.
Police, Fire, and ambulances had gotten there by this point. First I stood about ten feet away from where firefighters cracked open the doors of the car and rescued the driver and passenger (they were lucky they weren’t killed, and looked as if they may have only been whip lashed and were clearly in shock). After they were taken away on stretchers, I began to try to find out what happened.
Eyewitness Louis Gallo told me that while he was walking his dog on 6th Avenue near the corner of 1st Street, he saw a burgundy Nissan Maxima heading south on 6th attempt to pass a white livery cab going in the same direction. As the livery cab slowed at the intersection, the Nissan accelerated to pass it on the left across the double yellow line. The livery cab began to take a left turn, which clipped the Nissan, causing its driver to completely lose control of her vehicle.
She most likely cut the steering wheel sharply to the right to compensate for being knocked to the left and also to avoid colliding head-on with the parked car pointing in the opposite direction. Simultaneously, she must have slammed the brakes. Gallo told me she was going at least 40 mph.
And she must have been going at least that fast. After getting hit, her momentum carried her another 100 feet slamming into my parents’ silver Subaru Forester and then spinning out (fishtailing) almost 180 degrees.
The burgundy Nissan was actually coming towards the camera when it collided with the white livery cab in the intersection
So my folks and I, who were in shock, then dealt with our “insurance” company. My parents have been paying Geico thousands upon thousands of dollars in car insurance premiums for twenty years in Brooklyn (which has exorbitant car insurance costs compared to the rest of the country). As I know from dealing with health insurance companies, Medicaid, and Healthy NY, insurance businesses are not there to truly provide a safety net– they’re trying to get away with paying as little as possible if anything at all.
But here’s my question: if the car is totaled, you get the worth of the car in the used market, but no car to drive. But if the damage is not past the threshold of “now totaled,” insurance pays for the repairs, and then you have your car back, good as new. This, I suppose, is understandable. But if you were no where near the vehicle when it gets destroyed, how is it that the worse the damage to your car is, the worse off you are? I thought that’s why you have insurance.
I asked someone about this and she told me that it was the same thing with Hurricane Katrina. If your house was damaged and could be repaired, insurance covered it and you had a house to live in. If your house was beyond repair, you got a check (valued at well below the actual value of the house) and then you became homeless. Am I the only one that this doesn’t sit very well with? Let me know your insurance stories if you have them, whether it be auto, health, home, life, etc.
