About an hour after posting yesterday that I was heading out to meet Katie, I was on the road. I had just passed Greenspoint and was nearing West Road when the traffic slowed to a crawl. I was thinking, "Shit. This is totally going to make me late to meet Katie. Wonder if I should call her..." when I felt something hit the side of the car. I looked out the window and saw that a big dump truck had decided to change lanes and, not seeing my car (I drive a Miata), had just hit me.
I started to get over so that I could pull off onto the shoulder. I get over and notice that while the truck has done the same thing, he's not actually stopped, but is still moving forward slowly. I figured he was just moving up enough to give me room, but the further he drove up, the less likely he seemed to actually be stopping. I start to panic, look for a license plate on the back, realize he doesn't have one, and start running after him.
I'm now in between his truck and the wall of the HOV lane, so I start banging on his door. He's still not stopping, so I start yelling things like, "Open the door, motherfucker! You just hit my car! Stop the fucking truck! Hey, stop!" All this time, I've been on the phone with my mom since I grabbed it off the dash, speed dialed her, and told her I just got hit as soon as it happened.
The truck finally stops and this old Hispanic man opens the door. I'm all like, "You just hit my car," to which he responds something like, "No. Me no. Pequeno? (Little in Spanish)" He kept asking pequeno or mas (big), but I told him it didn't matter, he'd just hit me. Turns out he spoke pretty much no English which certainly added even more frustration to an already awful event.
Since he didn't look like he was going to take off, I started back to my car to get my insurance card and driver's license. Suddenly, a green Mustang started to pull in between us. Turns out that my friend Kendall was driving by and saw me so she pulled over to help. I give her the phone and have her call 911 and go take a look at my car.
A truck full of the coworkers of the guy who had hit me also had stopped. Since they didn't speak English very well either, they gave me a cell phone so I could talk to their boss who kept trying to tell me that it wasn't necessary to call the police, he would cover all my damages, yadda yadda yadda. There was no way, though, I was just going to take his word and drive off since I could call him the next day and get, "Kymberlie who?" I was not going to get screwed since none of this was my fault.
At first, it the damage looked pretty minor (gash in the back driver's side tire, damage to the section around the wheel, scraps on the hubcab), but after my parents arrived (they left as soon as I called them), we started looking at the car from the back and noticed that the wheels seemed to be leaning in from the top. The wrecker driver that later towed my car said it looked like when the truck caught my car, it pulled either the suspension or the axle.
Apparently everyone must drive past this section of I-45 around 7:00 on Fridays since, in addition to Kendall, Elaine and Joanna, my brother's girlfriend, drove past and called (or had Russell call) to see if I was alright.
After about an hour, a state trooper (Trooper Cash; I wanted to ask him if his first name was Johnny, but I refrained) arrived. It looked like we'd be able to at least get the car off the freeway so our little caravan (my car, my parents, Kendall, the dump truck, and his truckful of co-workers that had also stopped) moved to the Taqueria Arandas.
Trooper Cash took our statements and then started looking at the damage to the cars. He kept saying there was no tire residue from the truck to my car which puzzled me; I couldn't figure out what that had to do with anything. He did, however, find some white residue, though he was unsure where it came from.
After a little while he came over and said that while he could tell that there was damage done to the cars, he couldn't make a detemination on who had hit who. I start freaking out because I *know* I'm not at fault. Hell, I'd see a dump truck if I tried to get over but he wouldn't necessarily see me if he tried to and I always check my blind spots.
All this time, Kendall had been looking over the wheels of the truck, trying to find some evidence of what had happened. We'd found a part of the center of the wheel at the front of the truck that had what appeared to be a new scrape (it was shiny while everything else was rusted looking), but it was hard to tie to my car. Suddenly, Kendall holds up a shred of silver plastic that was embedded in one of the lugnuts. Turns out that it was a small piece of my car.
We took it to Trooper Cash who looked back over the tire and my car, and then he went back to talk to the driver of the truck again. I wasn't aware of this, but the truck's driver had told him that we were actually in the same lane, with me behind him. He said that I got over into the next lane, saw a car coming, and swerved back into the lane, clipping his truck.
If he would have told me this at the beginning, I think I could have saved us all some time since I don't think it would be physically possible for this to happen. If I would have hit him, I would have hit him with either the front of my car or the entire side. When you turn the wheel, the front of the car turns first, so there's no way for only my back to have hit him if I would have been behind him.
Anyway, Trooper Cash comes back over to us and tells me that the other driver is receiving a citation for an unlawful lane change since his story doesn't fit the evidence. I asked if that meant he was at fault to which he replied, "I don't assign blame, ma'am, that's for the courts to decide. However, he is getting a citation and you are not."
Thanks to Kendall turning into a CSI (Trooper Cash even told her she should be a police officer), everything looks like it's going to turn out okay. I did call the guy's insurance company today and only got an answering machine telling me to call back during normal business hours, so I'm a little freaked by that. Please don't let them be some fly-by-night cheap ass rinky dink company.
Kendall dropped me off downtown, so I was able to make it to the Geek Gathering, though it only lasted about a half hour or so longer (damn it!). Katie, Chris, Jon, and I went over to the Flying Saucer which was more crowded than I'd ever seen thanks to some pub crawl. Eventually Sat showed up as well and even let me talk him into driving me back home to Spring. Thanks, Sat!
I was so hyped up on adrenaline yesterday that I just felt plain exhausted today. I was supposed to go to bingo night at a bar with a bunch of friends and shopping with Katie, but since I didn't have a car, I couldn't make it. A weekend with stuff to do and no car totally sucks.
Cross your fingers that when I call that company on Monday everything works out. At least I work from home so I won't be totally screwed if I can't get a rental car right away, but I definitely don't want this thing to drag out.
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