Winter weather brings the winter driving.....and my FIRST ACCIDENT!!

First off I would like to state that it was NOT my fault at all!!

As the winter weather has settled into Minnesota with snow packed roads, the traffic has becoming worse. This past week I think the longest I spent driving home was about 2 hours and I only live about 10 miles away from work. But if you would now allow me to step up onto my soapbox for a moment. I have lived my entire life in the Midwest where it does snow every winter and it does reach freezing temperatures so I have learned to drive in the snow and ice (if necessary). And I'm pretty sure that most of the people that live here now grew up the same way. So why don't they learn to drive when inclement weather strikes? Why do people feel the need to rush, tailgate or budge in front of other drivers when the roads are slick? Don't they realize that everyone else is in the same boat? I think it is much more important to make it home safely than it is to get there in the quickest time possible. Why is there such rage? Speaking of which, one guy actually scared me with his rage the other day. I-35W going southbound (towards my house) was practically at a stand still only inching forward as the minutes passed by. But there was one guy that thought he deserved to be considered more important than everyone else on the road. I was coming up to an on ramp and there were about 3 cars waiting to merge in but the guy in the 4th car was the one better than the rest of us. He decided he wasn't going to wait for his turn to merge and basically took a 90 degree turn right in front of me where he was basically perpendicular to the front of my car (please note that I had not even reached the area where the merging lines meet). So of course I honked my horn and he glared at me and flipped me off for about 15 seconds. COME ON DUDE! Okay to be honest he scared me a little bit b/c it looked like he just snapped. We were at a stand still so if I had flipped him off back, I kind of wondered if he would have gotten out of his car and come after me. I was actually in shock. Then when he was fully in front of me as we started going, he actually slammed on his brakes for no reason at all. Probably to cause rage in me, but it just kind of kept me in shock for a while. But he continued his rage and swerved into the middle lane in front of someone else and eventually went to the carpool lane....I have to say that I am guilty of wishing that he eventually went into the ditch b/c of his rage. Actually I felt really bad for his passenger...who knows how he treated that person.

Now for my accident...I know you are all waiting for this one. I had Monday off to do a little wedding dress/bridesmaid dress shopping with my friend Kristine and it had snowed on Sunday night quite a bit so the roads where not that desirable and that carried into snow packed roads on Tuesday. And if you know anything about snow packed roads, you know that it basically turns as slick as ice. I was on my way to work ready for the yummy food our department was going to have for our ALL DAY smorgasbord. I was almost to work and was almost to an intersection where the road was completely snow packed so I crept along like a grandma as the street was very slick and I was a good distance away from the car in front of me. As I was getting closer to the intersection I actually slid a little bit but it was controlled by the ABS in my car so I had no problems with the cars in front of me. By the time I got up to the lights, it turned red so I stopped......but for some reason the guy behind me wanted to follow so close on this slick street that he didn't make the stop and hit me. Of course I yelled out some choice obscenities but regained my control and was able to turn the corner and pull over. The other driver did too and he was very nice. He first asked if I was okay and then we looked at the damage.

Okay so the damage is really not that bad. You can see the two images above are close ups of the two sides of the bumper and this bottom picture is of the entire bumper. The gentleman gave me his insurance info and business card and I gave him my business card (there was no way I was going to report it to my insurance!) He said he would make a claim later that day. He was good to his word and the next morning his insurance agent called me. I had set up an appointment at a body shop and also arranged a rental in no time at all. I took my car in last night and got a Dodge Avenger as a rental. It is quite a fun little car. I am a little disappointed to come back from lunch today to receive a message from the body shop telling me that my car could be done tonight. I thought I could have this car throughout the weekend. :-) The interesting part is that the above damage did constitute a new bumper and repair of the absorber something that is behind the bumper and comes to the grand total of $788.00. That is just about meeting the guy's $1000 deductible. But he has to fix his car too which looked worse than my car did. And as a little side note.....had I backed into something or done something myself to cause the above damage....I probably wouldn't have gotten it fixed. It probably would have only cost me a lower price in resale in the future should I want to get a new car. But I don't have to worry about that b/c some other poor guy had to pay for it. I hope his holiday season gets better from here on out. He really is a nice man as he had emailed me a couple times to make sure that his agent called and that I was truly okay. All in all, I had a very positive 1st accident experience.