First of all, thanks to the Accident Hash podcast for the (stolen) title to this blog entry.
So I get a call just after eight this morning – I was working the late shift and so was still in bed – and it’s my mom and she’s been in an accident. Obviously my first question was “Is everyone ok?”, which was indeed the case. Fortunately.
What happened? Well, a left rear wheel came off of a bakkie (South African for “pick-up truck”) which was traveling in the opposite direction on the other side of the central barrier on the highway to Pretoria. The central grassy barrier is easily twenty meters wide. This wheel then somehow managed to find its way across the barrier, which was to the right of the pick-up, and bounced up, coming down onto the top left corner of my mother’s car. Right above where my brother was sitting in the front passenger seat (left-side). And shit, it must have come down hard, but luckily nobody got hurt.
It did instantly turn me off of cabriolet vehicles.
Here are some pics:
So now its the whole insurance game once more. Painful in the least. I’m pretty sure the price tag is going to be hefty even if they choose not to write off the car. The real bad thing is that the pick-up the wheel came off (it turns out the axle broke, the whole wheel came off, not just the tyre)(tire??? spelling in head not working) belongs to what seemed like a decent, hard working yet poorly paid construction worker. (Which is the norm in South Africa.)
Although he was well dressed, one could see that he doesn’t have the money to pay for something like this. Sure, his vehicle was probably not roadworthy, and if someone had been hurt my opinion would probably differ greatly, but now the lawyers from the insurance company are probably going to go after this guy, who has no insurance, and clean out what little he has.
At a basic guesstimate of R30 000 it will probably cost something close to this guy’s annual salary.
That is sad. The guy is just getting by and now through really bad luck he could end up being destroyed financially.
And then of course we may have to find a way to afford a new car for my mother.
Nobody wins.
As I said, life sucks sometimes.
3 replies on “Life Sucks Sometimes”
Oh man that sucks, but thankfully everyone is ok.
Nice stab at the attorneys who work for insurance companies.
Actually, the stab is really at the differing scale of economies in which South Africans live.
The fact that a repair to a car could cost as much as the annual salary of one hard-working, honest person is frightening and really unfair.
Then again, the fact that basic poverty prevented the owner of the pick-up from maintaining his vehicle properly is also to blame.