Sad day for the grease car
Tonight was tragic for me… I lost the grease car.
As I was traveling down the interstate in the high speed lane at 60 mph, a car entering from an on ramp traveled across three lanes of traffic into my lane without even coming up to speed. I had slowed down to almost 35 mph from 60 and she all of a sudden slammed on her brakes. I asked her why and she said “I don’t know”. WTF???
Of coarse I hit her from the back and a third car hit me. It was crazy that she didn’t use the merge lane (3 lanes in that location) to accelerate. The wild thing is the cop determined that I was the cause of the accident, because she was “established” in the lane. Apparently it doesn’t matter that she crossed 2 lanes at almost a 45 deg angle right into the lane of higher speed traffic… Apparently failure to yield to oncoming traffic doesn’t matter either.
I did some measurements and calculations and figured I was doing 35 mph or less when I hit her. The car seems to support the low speed of the impact.
Both I and the guy who hit me told the officer she hit her brakes first and I had no where to go, but alas it didn’t matter. The officer told me he only saw my skid marks and I skidded 105 ft. and there was no evidence of her skidding. It was dark by the time the officer arrived so it made visual identification of the skid a bit difficult.
I went to the scene today, and sure enough I measure my skids as 70 ft and her skid at 91 ft. Skid length indicates the my car was doing approximate 35 mph or less as skid friction is less than static friction.
Tomorrow I am going to the Highway Patrol Office to ask for a senior investigator to go to the site with me to check the evidence hopefully to get the veridic changed, but if nothing else to correct the record of events….
The only thing is the insurance company will probably total the car due to its age. I can’t see them paying $4000 for repairs if the car is only worth $4000. The car was in pristine shape, with a rebuilt engine. I was planning to sell it anyway, but hate to see our time together come to an end like this.
Grease car | Nick | 14 April 2012 |
