The importance of telling the truth and doing the right thing

1FSTBRD

Registered User
Sorry if this is a bit long, but I have to get it out.

I was shopping at the local grocery store tonight, and my alarm pager had gone off on my SC. There's been times where there's been a false alarm, so I didn't think too much of it. Anyways, I came out of the store and was about to put my groceries in the car and a guy came up and asked, "is this your car?". I said "yeah". He said, "there was someone who hit your car and then went into the store". I looked at the front fender/ bumper, and my corner marker light was lying on the ground (intact!), and the front driver's side bumper corner had a big scrape on it. The other driver must have scraped the whole side of their car, or at least a good portion of it. It's not too bad--it didn't crack the bumper. And the damage was almost exclusively relegated to the front bumper.....didn't transfer to the front headlight, nor the hood, and there is a small, barely visible scrape on the driver's front fender. But still, you know......I keep my things in great condition and take care of them. The most frustrating thing for me is that I always park at the back of the parking lot, to avoid these sorts of fender benders.

Another witness came forward and said that he had seen the whole thing. I took both of their names and numbers, and thanked them profusely for coming forward.....AND waiting around to see who belonged to the parked car. They both said that there was significant damage to the other vehicle, whereas my car was almost unscathed. There was a note left on my windshield with a phone number to call.

When I called the number, I left a message on the person's voice mail. She said that she wasn't in any accident, nor did she know anything about it, but was willing to co-operate with the police or insurance company in that it was NOT her that did it. Right now, i'm giving the other party the benefit of the doubt in that they gave a phone number that had a wrong digit in it or something.

Here's where the importance of telling the truth and doing the right thing come in. Louie, the second witness, had taken a picture of the offending vehicle, right next to mine, including the licence plate in clear day! A white Nissan Rogue. When I called him back tonight, I said that the phone number that was left on my windshield was an invalid one, and that I need the picture so that I can submit it to the police. Here, any hit and run needs to be reported to the police. I'm not really sure how tough they are on parking lot fender benders, but still, a hit and run is a hit and run where you're not exchanging licenses and particulars. I suppose you can't wait there forever, but still......you should wait there for a little while, at least.

My second witness saw them put the phone number there, and then go into the store and shop and then come out and leave the scene. They didn't try at all to stick around.

I'll keep you all posted after I go to the cop shop tonight with the license plate number and the picture. Still, i'm worried that the insurance company may try to write the car off. It does have a rebuilt status (my guess is rebuilt salvage--I didn't ask, though I knew it had a rebuilt status), and i've heard of some cases where they write off perfectly good cars that have light cosmetic damage because they've been in an accident before. I'm going to go into it fighting it and say, "look, my car was parked and someone damaged it in a hit and run. I park at the back of the parking lot to avoid the typical fender bender things. These cars are rare, and becoming rarer by the year"

Does anyone have any advice here on any facet of this?
 
Does your insurance include comprehensive?

What would you guess it would cost to have it fixed?
 
Dude probably left his ex-girlfriend's phone number on your car. lol Sorry, not funny.

Police should have no problem getting the truth with the picture of the license plate #. My son was once rear ended by a hit and run. Left an imprint of his license plate in the bumper so needless to say he was picked up a short time later and confessed.

As for the write off - well your best bet is if you have receipts for recent repairs. They'll add that to the value of the car. Good luck!
 
Our insurance up here in Manitoba (Canada) is different in that it's through the government, so there's no comprehensive. It's all just a straight at fault/ not at fault, with liability insurance.

They would have to replace the bumper, i'm guessing maybe $500-$1000 damage?

Edit: i'd put in the claim with both the police and the insurance company. Considering that this was a fake phone number (could be a digit off.....but come on, leave your plate # and driver's licence phone number), can you imagine how shocked this guy will be once he gets contacted by the insurance company? My witness--in addition to taking the picture with the licence plate--told me the description of the people, as well. Over the phone with the insurance person, they said in their database that the licence plate did match to that Nissan Rogue, and that the description (gender, race, height) matched those of the driver.

What I don't get is this--assuming that this was an intentionally fake phone number to appease the witnesses who saw this happen--there's really no point to leaving wrong contact info, because they'll still get dinged with an at fault accident, seeing as that they don't have the particulars of the other driver. The only thing that they evaded here was, perhaps (assuming that they would not accept fault) is an angry phone call from whoever owned the other car. Seeing as that there was significant damage to the other vehicle, you'd assume that this person would want to get the insurance company to fix the vehicle.....unless they have so many infractions on their driving record that they assumed that their insurance and licence rates would be so high that they'd be better off to fix the car outside of the insurance company's knowledge.

The insurance person said that with the photo, the witnesses and the description of who was driving the car, that I won't have to pay my deductible. Sometimes, the good guys win!
 
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I'll post up a photo of my damage, but Orwell is right......big brother is watching. :D You can see the outline of the top back half of my car to the right of theirs. It's also nice to have a car alarm, so that everything is really loud and extravagant, just in case anyone in the parking lot had missed it.

accidentphoto10000X1333.jpg
 
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What I don't get is this--assuming that this was an intentionally fake phone number to appease the witnesses who saw this happen

I heard a story one time where the note said "I'm pretending to write my contact info on this note, so these people won't get on my case. Have a nice day!"

So yes, some sort of evasion going on, but no telling what the details were - maybe they were worried about immigration, or they just shop lifted, or they're in witness protection and just wanted avoid more attention...who knows.
 
I heard a story one time where the note said "I'm pretending to write my contact info on this note, so these people won't get on my case. Have a nice day!".

Wow--I don't doubt that! I think that it's great, in this case, that this person will get tracked down and be forced to do the right thing. Karma is something that one doesn't realize right away, and I think that it's best to have a good karmic value about oneself.

My witness with the photo said that, unfortunately, he was screwed in a parking lot hit and run accident where the other person didn't leave any note. So one can start to see why he did what he did and why he wanted everything to be legit and proper.

Last year, I was on a bit of a vacation on one weekend, when I was walking down a sidewalk and right next to me, I had seen a lady back into the vehicle behind her. She started to drive off very slowly (it was a dead end street and she had to turn around, anyways), and I went up to her car and said, "hey, wait a minute--you just hit that car behind you". She said, "no I didn't". I said "Yes you did". She said, "well, I didn't notice anything". This was the part where I was really starting to get irate. The vehicle behind her had people in it, who got out and surveyed their vehicle for damage--they were Asian, looked like they didn't speak much English, and I kind of wondered if they knew what the protocol was for any sort of small bump or fender bender.

The person that I was with had saw and heard the accident as well.....how this lady in the car "didn't notice it" was an outright lie, so I called her out for lying. If you back into a car, enough that it causes a loud thud, you're going to hear it or feel it. Not only that, but when she looked at me after it happened, there was that "whoops!" sort of playful look on her face. On top of which, she was in an expensive convertible (Lexus, I think), so she had a real holier than thou attitude, like the rules don't pertain to her or something. She started to get angry and then I mentioned "you wouldn't want Autopac to nail you for a hit and run, would you? Because you hit the car and then you ran". At this point, she softened her tone and did a complete 360 in attitude and had decided to exchange particulars with the other driver, but it basically had to be forced out of her, and I had left my contact info as a witness. I guess that she assumed that if nobody said anything (and even after they said something) that she was going to try to get out of it.

Getting into this argument with someone on my vacation--about an accident that wasn't even involving my car--was what I felt was the right thing. It's what I'd want others to do if the roles were reversed. I know, as well, that a couple of other people had seen this lady back into the vehicle behind her, yet they didn't stop and offer any witness info, which I thought was the cheap and cowardly way out.
 
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Besides an impact sensor on my SC's car alarm, I have a dash cam that detects impacts when parked - depends on the angle, etc. but it also records g-force where certain metrics can be extracted, gps, date/time is noted, etc.

I like your ability to get a text/alert, tho...
 
Besides an impact sensor on my SC's car alarm, I have a dash cam that detects impacts when parked - depends on the angle, etc. but it also records g-force where certain metrics can be extracted, gps, date/time is noted, etc.

I like your ability to get a text/alert, tho...

Really? As in a camera that takes a picture? I have Compustar alarms with pagers on both of my cars, which are good for some piece of mind.

This should probably be put in the wanted to buy section (i'll probably post something there), but next question--can anyone source or provide me an SC bumper? Let me know the price, because I want to do all the pre-homework before I go into the estimator on Thursday. Preferrably, white, to keep the costs down in the repair (painting it would make it more expensive, probably by $200-$500 dollars). I Googled Thunderbird SC bumper used for sale, but nothing came up. I'm going into this thinking that the sheer on-paper odds of the car being written off are extremely high, and i'm going into it thinking that Autopac is going to try to price a new bumper from Ford, which i'm assuming that Ford doesn't even carry anymore, and if they do, it would be a ridiculous amount of money.
 
As in a camera that takes a picture?

Video (w/audio) usually, but it includes the option to manually take snapshots - it also has a battery so you can take it outside the car and walk around, taking video/photos if you like. Great way to record at the scene besides having a record when it happened. It saves the last 5 days driving so if something happens, I can get playback before/after.

Mine is hard wired in and stuck the windshield, just to the right of the rearview mirror. I usually forget it's even there. I'm thinking about getting a twin and pointing it to the rear.

I also have two live-feed rear view cameras to my 7" LCD head unit - one (w/night vision) is located where the lock cylinder was in my trunk.
 
Video (w/audio) usually, but it includes the option to manually take snapshots - it also has a battery so you can take it outside the car and walk around, taking video/photos if you like. Great way to record at the scene besides having a record when it happened. It saves the last 5 days driving so if something happens, I can get playback before/after.

Mine is hard wired in and stuck the windshield, just to the right of the rearview mirror. I usually forget it's even there. I'm thinking about getting a twin and pointing it to the rear.

I also have two live-feed rear view cameras to my 7" LCD head unit - one (w/night vision) is located where the lock cylinder was in my trunk.

Are you driving a movie shooting vehicle or are you driving a car, man? :D Seriously, that's pretty awesome, though.
 
Sorry to hear about this. At least you got pictures and a witnesses. Some bastard hit my Cougar yesterday bent the door and screwed the mirror up. I didn't realize it till I was down the road when I tried to look in the mirror. I realized then that the vehicle that was parked next to me when I left was the one that did it with someone still sitting inside. Boy I was pissed. My car doesn't look like the nicest thing because I don't have the money to get it painted, but it's special to me. Man I was so mad.
 
Sorry to hear about this. At least you got pictures and a witnesses. Some bastard hit my Cougar yesterday bent the door and screwed the mirror up. I didn't realize it till I was down the road when I tried to look in the mirror. I realized then that the vehicle that was parked next to me when I left was the one that did it with someone still sitting inside. Boy I was pissed. My car doesn't look like the nicest thing because I don't have the money to get it painted, but it's special to me. Man I was so mad.

I feel for you, man.....that truly sucks. The XR7's are even rarer than the SC's. What scares me in this world is what people will try to get away with if they think that nobody is watching them.

What really aggravates me about vehicle collisions (especially hit and runs) is that, fine, you don't care about your stuff. We've all known kids when we were growing up that destroyed their toys, for some odd reason. But when it affects someone else's property or personal belongings, that's when it stops being your own personal belief and one that's imposed on the community, like "I don't care about my stuff, so therefore, you shouldn't, either. Let's just all destroy our things". Many of us work extremely hard to keep our things in great condition, so that we can enjoy them longer.
 
I went to the insurance place to get an estimate done, and with parts, labour and taxes, it comes to $1900. That might be a small bit high, but from what i've priced online for a reconditioned bumper, it's $600 US ($750 Canadian...not including shipping), then the body shop said that to paint it and re-install it would be $500-$600, and I sourced a corner marker light for $50 US online ($62 Cdn). Factor in shipping, and that's at least probably $100 more, and that's at least $1400 that I can figure.

The point of resistance isn't necessarily that, though.....my SC has gone through two salvage claims in two separate accidents. I knew about one....didn't know about the other one (didn't look into the car's history, but I had bought it for $2000, so I wasn't too concerned). Here in Manitoba, a car is only supposed to be given one salvage title and after that, any future claims/ damages automatically render the car a scrap/ parts only title. Truthfully, after knowing about this (likely being) the third salvage title, I think that it's been a great run with my SC, but perhaps this car (not the SC's in general, though) itself just attracts too much bad luck.

Today or tomorrow, i'm going to itemize all my upgrades and go in with my estimated worth on it to get back what I think is fair. The adjuster said that another adjuster is going to look at the car--a collector sort of adjuster that can give an accurate appraisal, based on the market value and the upgrades and things that i've done to the car.
 
Don't do what I did - I took a list of mods and upgrades that I've done to my insurance adjuster for the purpose of preventing a write-off, it ended up making things worse because they viewed them as "racing mods" and denied any future coverage at all. Just FYI. :)
 
Don't do what I did - I took a list of mods and upgrades that I've done to my insurance adjuster for the purpose of preventing a write-off, it ended up making things worse because they viewed them as "racing mods" and denied any future coverage at all. Just FYI. :)

Whoa....that's pretty extreme. Good to know that an insurance company may do that, somewhere. In my case, the mods are something that I need to present, in order to get some of my money back on the car.

I'm curious as to why they would deny you future coverage......sure you've done modifications to make the car go faster, but couldn't they then say that a 2015 Shelby Cobra would be uninsurable, because the only way that you can take full advantage of that power is to go racing with it? I can see their point on one hand, but can't see it on the other......performance cars are always meant to go fast at some point, and obviously, going faster always presents more of a risk.
 
I wouldn't conflate racing mods with salvage status and what it means in your case. It would be nice to know if local (CA) policies/laws force a certain scenario once salvage statuses accrue, tho. Sounds like you're in good hands, so good luck & keep us posted, thanks.
 
I'm almost wondering now if I shouldn't buy the SC back for parts and then put the engine in my '99 Mustang. The downside is that it would devolve from OBDII to OBD1, but think of how the Mustang would fly, being a much lighter car.
 
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