dumbest. accident. ever.

[andruboz]

i do roadside service in my yaris. tonite i pulled up behind a 97 corolla with a flat tire. Turn off the engine and put the hazzard lights on. procedure requires me to blackberry my location to base when i arrive. semi's are hauling at 70mph 4 feet away. its shakin the car so much i have to concentrate on the blackberry. BONK!

the wind off the semis and a tiny slope i didn't notice in the dark conspired to bounce me off the customer's corolla.

I hadn't set the parking brake or left it in gear.
there were small scratches in both cars as my license plate was offset a few inches to his. didn't hit hard enuff to set the airbags off. maybe going 2-3 miles an hour.

he was sure i totally crushed the foam core under the bumperskin and did multiple hundreds of dollars of damage.
Tried to tell him that was possibly true if i was driving a steel bumpered car, but the front of a yaris is even rubbery-er and bouncier than a '97 corolla.
no luck with that argument.

cop arrives, figures out the story. says "I don't see hardly any damage."
I didn't get him to write this on the -exchange of information form.

forgot to bring my phone with the 2mp camera.

we were over-the-top polite while all this was going on. and i still had to change his tire. i'm just not sure he's going to stay easy going and polite since he might be able to make some money on this.

I know its my fault and i'm going to eat it. already told geico.

last time i got hit [dumbass trying to U-turn a borrowed 5th wheel camper in a fast food parking lot with no idea of how far the back overhang was going to swing] i let it go. took his name and number and some insurance policy that didn't cover the camper he was pulling and never called him. estimated at $430 i got it fixed by a friend for $60 material and $100 labor.
Apparently that did not build up any good karma points.

oh well. won't do that again. starting to hate my blackberry though.

first [my fault] accident since 1990. i was an youthful uninsured socal dirtbag back then.