So an interesting update… Last night I did a little research and the woman who hit me has a 2015 conviction/guilty plea for driving on a suspended license… Hopefully that’s not the case this time, as it would make it impossible for her to be an authorized driver on the insurance policy.
But wait, there’s more. Lots more…
The person listed on the insurance policy has a five page long rap sheet in Philadelphia alone… His most recent arrest was in mid-July for aggravated assault, possession of an illegal firearm, possession of instrument of crime with intent, terroristic threats with intent to terrorize another, false imprisonment, simple assault, reckless endangerment of another person, unlawful restraint causing serious bodily injury, endangering the welfare of children as the parent/guardian, carrying a firearm publicly in Philadelphia, and carrying a concealed firearm without a permit.
He has an illustrious record as a drug dealer, with a series of drug and gun offenses running from 1999 through 2006 filling out the other four pages. There are a few instances of assault, harassment, stalking and terroristic threats thrown in for good measure.
So from what I can tell, he’s currently in jail awaiting his next court appearance, and based on the charges there’s a pretty good chance he’s in there because of something he did to the woman who rear ended me… which means the likelihood she had permission to be driving his car is pretty low… which means the likelihood that his insurance pays out is pretty low… and this doesn’t seem like the kind of couple I should sue if I value my safety and peace of mind.
But the good news is my insurance company said that if the other insurance company won’t pay, it won’t go down on my policy as my fault, so it’ll only cost me $250 and won’t impact my rates.
I mean, I’ve rear ended two people in 17 years of driving. One was the accident this spring that I posted on here about, which was pretty bad… The other was when I was in high school, and I was probably going about 10 miles per hour. My only other at-fault accident was when I spun out my Camaro in the rain in high school and clipped a guardrail.
My wife got rear ended a few years ago and we stupidly didn’t have uninsured motorist coverage. (insurance is -$EV obv generally, but I thought this would be particularly so and expensive, but it’s actually pretty cheap) Cost us $8k - it was a fairly bad collision. The people who rear ended us said something about paying, but never did. They were obviously poor (not that I have money) and the expectation of collecting anything was tiny. Sucked it up.
My state requires uninsured motorist coverage, kind of counterintuitive since they also require liability coverage but insurance companies own the state so we get both
That’s a good question and a little googling didn’t turn up a good answer. I wonder if the rules came about historically because employers and landowners wanted to know or as a civil liberty/transparency issue so that the public would know who the government was arresting - no secret arrests.
Long time ago I was driving for the first time after breaking my leg. I still had a cast (after about four weeks). I was in bumper to bumper traffic and my foot slipped and I tapped the car in front of me. I was not even going five miles an hour.
I thought, “Well I screwed up, maybe I can get some sympathy with the broken leg.” I proceed to get out of the car and crutch over to the other car when the driver gets out. As she gets out of the car I notice she is eight plus months pregnant. “Shit”, I thought.
We exchanged information and there was no visible damage to either car, but she wanted to get checked out to make sure the baby was okay. Fortunately she called me after her doctor visit and told me everything was fine.
Ugh, that sucks. Sorry to hear it. Did you guys try to get a judgment against the people that rear ended you? Even if you can’t collect now, I would think it would be good to have in case those people ever come into money… But obviously IANAL, etc.
In school today, I decided to have a more student-centered class than usual. I asked the students what they wanted to talk about from the news. They told me about a statue being torn down in Prague. I didn’t know much about it but once I got some basic info, I asked the students to write down some questions related to it that they wanted to discuss.
As I was asking the students about the questions they came up with to put them on the board, I tried to reword a grammatically incorrect question by writing, “Should the hatred of Russians by Czechs be acceptable in the present era?”
Another student responded, “That may not be a good question because of course our hatred of Russians is justified.”
I expected a student to possibly jump in and disagree. After all, there are students from the former Soviet Union that I teach at that school. As a matter of fact, one of the students in this class is Russian but was absent today. Nobody said a word.
Just as I posted a day or two ago, casual racism and bigotry that would shock Americans is completely acceptable and normal. However, I expected my students to not be as bigoted. After all, they are part of the future generation that is supposed to be more tolerant and accepting of difference compared to previous generations. But perhaps they are an improvement over the fact that 50% of surveyed Czechs would feel at least somewhat uncomfortable with having a Russian neighbor.
Thankfully, this doesn’t exhibit itself aggressively in public all that often (at least in Prague that is). It’s more one of those things that people appear to grumble about under their breath. Evidently, 22% of Czechs would find it at least unpleasant to live next to an American. Here’s hoping that somebody from that 22% doesn’t live next to me!