Goodbye to Toothless

A couple of weeks ago Andrew got in a car accident. All stories match and both insurance companies agree, it was the other guy's fault.

Andrew and I were in Salem because I had an interview and Andrew went with me to be moral support.  While I was in the interview Andrew went to a T-mobile store. He was on his way back when he got in the accident. He was driving past a shopping center in a 35mph zone with two lanes each way. Andrew was in the middle lane.The SUV next to him turned right into the shopping center ,and a mini van took the opportunity to turn left out of the shopping center. The mini van driver should have made sure there wasn't a car in that blind spot behind the SUV, but it really was exceptionally bad timing. The mini van couldn't see Andrew because of the SUV and Andrew couldn't see the mini van. For Andrew, the end result was that a mini van appeared magically on the road from nowhere about ten feet in front him. 

Andrew has incredible reflexes. It serves him well. There was no one in the oncoming lane, and he had the presence of mind to swerve into it while breaking (instead of merely locking up the breaks like I probably would have done.) As a result Andrew and Toothless (Toothless was a 2002 Ford Taurus) didn't T-bone the mini van. Instead, the nose of the mini van hit Toothless in the passenger side headlight and slid down the side of the car denting everything in its path. 

Thanks to Andrew's quick thinking, the people involved were not severely damaged.  Andrew is seeing a chiropractor for his neck and had to miss a day of work, but it could have been much worse. I imagine the mini van driver is in similar shape. The cars are another matter. 

The body damage was too much for Toothless. The Insurance company counted the car a Total Loss and we should be getting some money next week that will be enough to buy something comparable. Poor Toothless. He died heroically. He will likely be reborn as something with a salvage title or maybe he will donate his organs and become part of many cars. Maybe he will be reborn as dishwasher. 

I'm hoping we can claim compensation for the missed day of work and maybe some of the time spent recovering from a neck injury that would have been spent having fun or working on the house. That would be nice. By the way, did you know that it's actually a good thing to brace yourself for impact when you're in a car accident? So says the chiropractor that Andrew saw. Evidently the idea that it's better to be relaxed on impact is a misconception. Being braced protects your joints. Who knew? Not me.