I was driving, Steve was in the passenger seat. We were proceeding along a large, four-lane parkway when a mid-sized U-Haul truck (which had a stop sign and should have waited for us to pass) abruptly pulled out of a small side street and smashed into our truck. I swerved to avoid, but the U-Haul broadsided us anyway.
The U-Haul quickly left the scene, pushing our stopped truck out of the way to do so. So quickly in fact, that we couldn't get a good look at the driver or more identifying information on the vehicle (other than, obviously, to see that it was of the U-Haul persuasion) before he/she fled.
I am profoundly shaken up. Not because of the accident, accidents happen. Not because of the callous disregard of the U-Haul driver, people can be thoughtless, this is not news. After Steve and I confirmed to each other that we were uninjured, I got out of the truck feeling okay about the whole thing, but then I saw the damage... to the side of the truck where Steve was sitting just moments before. And I had an overwhelming feeling of failure that I did not somehow prevent what could have done so much more harm to the most important thing in the world to me. But that's life, I suppose. We are all so frail.
We'll find out from the insurance adjuster on Monday if our little truck can be repaired or if it's final act was to valiantly defend Steve from a much larger vehicle. If we can repair it, we will. We owe it that much. Otherwise, well... I guess we'll see.
2 comments:
I hope you filed a Police Report. Fleeing in a UHaul seems like a poor choice of getaway vehicle. The company will doubtless notice damage and red paint, and how many UHaul companies will there be in the neighborhood?
Well, that's another story in itself. Let's just say that Oakland PD has other priorities and without injuries they can't spare officers for traffic incidents (at least not for, as dispatch put it, "several hours"). This was after Steve's multiple attempts to get someone on Oakland PD's non-emergency line in the first place. We were invited to take pictures of the scene and file our police report online so at least we'd have something for our insurance company without spending the rest of the afternoon/evening on the street waiting for the cops (an option we availed ourselves of and filed the report online as soon as we returned home). U-Haul was no easier to get action from, despite Steve's immediate efforts. He ended up filing a claim with them online as well.
At least our insurance company was responsive and had a tow truck to us as quickly as possible to bring our poor little truck back to Santa Cruz, so we could deal with this mess from home. Oh, and my amazing little brother and his girlfriend drove out to meet us at the scene to lend us his car for "as long as you need it." I truly have the best brother in the world.
In the end, I feel most for the people of the City of Oakland, whose services are clearly understaffed and underfunded. It's horribly unfair to them. We were just unfortunate enough to have an accident there; we don't live with every day with such lack of responsiveness.
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