decidedlyodd

This morning while driving to work a Dodge Magnum rear-ended my shiny new car on the northbound onramp to I-5 at Olive. I was stopped at the yield sign waiting for the traffic on the left to go by when I heard a loud pop and my car lurched forward a little.

I pulled over to the shoulder and got out of the car. To say the least, I was pretty angry. The woman started totally freaking out about how she was driving her mother’s car eventhough she’s not supposed to be. I kept telling her to calm down, but she continued to freak out, trying to wipe away the scuff marks and paint damage on my car. Finally, I convinced her to give me her information.

I was shaken up a bit too (definitely doing that silent angry thing), mostly because I had no idea what to do (call the police? my insurance? nobody?). After examining the back of my car I detemined that the damage was fairly minor and almost certainly way below any insurance deductible. Still, the woman convinced me to follow her over to her work (a new car dealership on Lake City Way). I figured I might get some minor stuff fixed at her expense this way at the very least. At the body shop, the techs cleaned all the scuff marks off with some water and some sort of organic solvent, revealing the actual damage.

There doesn’t appear to be any body damage since it was mostly plastic that was hit at low speed. There’s a small fleck of paint that needs to be touched up on the bumper and one of the license plate lights needs a new mount (it’s loose right now). All in all, it should be easy to fix. I’m going to take the car over to the service department at the Mazda dealer some time this week to get it all taken care of. Hopefully, the woman will pay me back.

Ugh, what an obnoxious inconvinience.