Tuesday, March 15, 2016

What Constitutes an Accident - or Damage?

When I moved to Boulder, I was amazed by the rise in my auto insurance rates - nearly double what I paid in Florida or Virginia.  When I asked the company representative about it, he said that the raise was due to Colorado and its environment - frequent hail, falling rocks, high winds.  I paid my insurance for as long as I owned a vehicle, without any problems.  My last accident, while driving, was in 1976, when a vehicle owned by the University of Florida side-swiped me, changing lanes.  My only parking ticket came from having the back bumper of my car protruding six inches past the painted end line, which happened because the car ahead of me had it's rear bumper in the front of my parking space...
   Anyway.  I am a safe driver.  I look both ways, twice, before pulling out into traffic, or making any turns.  I was taught by my parents, and my High School Driver's Education instructor, to be a defensive driver. The above two incidents are the only tarnishes on my driving record since 1972, when I got my license to operate a motor vehicle.
   Yesterday, I was driving a client's car - a Lexus SUV.  I pulled into the Home Depot parking lot and parked the car. I was in the exact middle of my parking space, and there had been no vehicle parked to my right, the passenger side.  While Beatrice and I gathered our belongings to go inside and look for a small shelf, a white vehicle pulled in on the right side.  The new vehicle was also an SUV-type.  The wind had been gusting since before 9 a.m., as we opened our car doors, another gust caught them, and ripped them out of our hands. The plastic-coated edge of the passenger door touched the door panel of the white SUV.
   The driver jumped out of his car, and started yelling at Beatrice.  He was cursing up a storm.  He claimed that we had scratched his car.  I went around to look and see for myself.  The white vehicle was dusty, but by the time I got to the other side of the car, the man had wiped the car door around the supposed scratch.  Beatrice and I both looked at it, up and down, from straight on, from the front and the rear, from above and below.  I wet my fingers with saliva from my tongue, and I ran my fingers over the area that the man claimed was damaged.  Beatrice and I both told him that we could not see, or feel, any damage to his vehicle.  He kept insisting that we had scratched the length of the door panel, from under the window to the bottom of the door panel.  I did not see any such damage, nor did Bea.
   The man kept mixing the f-word and damn into his statements.  He asked what I would do in if I were him.  I shrugged, and said, "Nothing. There's no damage.  But I might wash my car."  That enraged him even more.  He pulled out his cell phone and took photos of us and of the Lexus.  He followed us into the store and made faces and nasty comments loud enough to be heard by Bea and I. The store did not have what we wanted, so we went back to the car.  The man followed us out, and took a photo of us driving away.
   I know that the plastic, soft door edge touched his vehicle's door.  There was, however, no visible mark on the door, and there was no damage that could be identified by touch.  I did not give the man insurance information for the car I was driving, nor did I give him any other information.
   Was I in the wrong?  What about the other driver's cursing comments?  I still feel like asking the Gods that be, "What the heck just happened?"

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