ot - rear-ended at the car wash

[525i winter driver]

popped in for a car wash yesterday before heading out of town with my girlfriend. normally i always go to the same place (i have nowhere to do it myself except for the street with no hose which i hate doing) but i'd never been to this one before. bad move, me.

so we'd just paid for a soap and rinse and started the car (still in park at the exit) ... and ... WHAM!

(wtf someone's screaming?)

i never saw it coming but it felt like at least 10-15kph, not sure bc i've never been REd before but it was a solid hit.

so i get out and one of the workers is hopping up and down on one leg and screaming bloody murder, obviously her leg had been caught between the two cars. and her co-worker is getting out of the car (pretty new toyota - a taxi) rabbitting on about how the brakes failed.

the other guy there comes over, looks at my (car's) rear end and then goes to the phone. moron#1 is still barking in my ear about brakes and the poor poor girl is still screaming and hopping up and down. the taxi driver just sits in his chair with the newspaper staring at us like a goat looking at a new fence. WTF????

so i tell the girl she needs to sit down and elevate and ice her leg... i get her a couple of chairs (one for the leg). i actually had to ask the taxi driver if i could please use the chair his bag was on. meanwhile, moron #1 goes back to drying the taxi he rearended everyone with. moron#2 is still on the phone but i interrupt him and ask him for a cloth to put some ice in for the girl (luckily i had some in a cooler)... and he hands me his filthy car rag! i ask for a clean one and he gives me a dirty look and then reaches (poor guy actually had to bend over a bit) under the counter and gives me a clean one along with another dirty look. i know first aid a bit and have seen a lot of leg injuries (soccer and skiing) and i would say almost for sure it's broken in at least one spot just below the knee - lucky she is fairly tall or the impact would have totally destroyed her knee. my gf and i are the only ones to help her so far.

so i check my car and it looks ok, the tow-hook cover popped off and i think there's a few new minor scratches (could be wrong)- sucks b/c i don't know what to look for really except surface damage and leaking fuel but the car's ok i think. moron#2 says everything's ok and the boss is coming later, i can go now.

so we pull out but decide to wait and park just outside and while we're talking (i don't notice) the taxi just pulls out and drives away. (brakes apparently ok now i guess) so i go back in and i inquire... apparently everything's fine (tout est correct, monsieur), he's gone to get the boss and an ambulance is coming. moron #1 is whistling away as he cleans the next car.

i am aware that empoyment at a car wash is pretty much an under-the-table affair and that different people have different reasons for working there. so i'm starting to think i could be screwing things up for the girl by sticking around (certainly for morons 1 and 2 but i don't care so much about them) but i don't get the feeling these guys have her best interests in mind so by now i'm pretty much decided to stick around until someone smarter shows up.

an ambulance arrives... moron #2 goes to talk to them and they sit there for a few minutes and then drive off. i inquire again... tout est correct of course, when the boss arrives they will go to the hospital together in a taxi. the girl is going fine... even laughing a bit (not in shock) and not bleeding badly, but definitely not walking anywhere - i ask her if she wants us to stick around or if there's anything i can do and she says no... ("this is nothing compared to having three kids" what a sweetie) i give her my phone number and wish her good luck.

as we're leaving we see a police car pull into the lot... we decide to go back and talk to them. but because we are already on a main road it takes a couple minutes to turn around and get back. i go in and tell one of the cops that i was the car in the accident. he says 'you're the taxi that hit her?', looking at my car... i say no i was the car in front... he looks at me, very confused... noone's saying anything. (all of this is in french which makes it worse for reason me talk french only medium good)

apparently morons 1&2 are telling the cops that the taxi driver was the one driving, that he hit the girl and drove off, and that no other car was involved. the girl is saying nothing. now i'm the goat staring at the new fence... i totally don't know what to say. the cop takes me outside and i tell him what really happened and that i'm really only concerned that the girl doesn't get ****ed over. he takes my info and says i can go (tout est correct).

i'm not sure what pissed me off the most. i broke my leg last summer and the people (my soccer team) kind of trying to help me were totally useless, a nurse later even drove my wheelchair into a wall (broken leg first) and then told me 'oh i guess i better put my coffee down'. watching morons 1 and 2 trying to cover their asses without a thought to the girl they'd just ****ed up was quite upsetting, as was the taxi driver's non-reaction. the cops left the car in idle the whole time with a/c on and the windows open in 30'c. getting rear-ended at a car wash is enough to piss anyone off, but i think what's pissing me off the most is that i didn't call moron #1 a ****ing liar to his face.

i'm still trying to wrap my head around this one - people suck sometimes and my faith in humanity is dropped a notch once again. the brighter side? i got to see all the hot cars coming back from the grand prix (briefly! including two awesome M3s and an M5 and some kind of space rocket car) and by the time we made it to the long-sault parkway we had the whole place to ourselves where we were given a parade.

(thanks for listening)

[repenttokyo]

wow that really really sucks dude, i'm sorry you had to go through that

[MurderBlack]

talk about a bad day... seriously I hate taxi drivers these days, their so careless on the road...

last friday night I witnessed a taxi take a right turn on crescent right into a bike path cinder block...because he got distracted by a pretty girl crossing the street...

His front end was totalled and his clients in the back seat (old couple from new york) got out of the car and started cussing at the driver while the he was dazed and holding his neck...

[BMWDriver]

Wow... well, people are strange.

I got rearended once too. I noticed one side of my bumper moved a centimeter forward on one side. I could tell at the wheel well. I pulled a bit on the bumper, and it lessened a bit. Now I don't even notice if it's aligned or not. I haven't looked.

The woman was nice about it. She got distracted by people jaywalking right in the middle of a boulevard (Christophe-Colomb) and didn't notice I had come to a stop - she was so dazed by the temerity of the jaywalkers. I decided it's no damage in the end, but her Jetta needed a bit of buffing for sure. I was nice about it.

It's frustrating to see people who don't do the right thing. At least YOU did the right thing, and beyond.

[Qube]

Another day in Montreal...

[filip00]

damn i think i'd be completely pissed of if i was there. what bothers me is...why didn't you call the cops after he rearended you? here it's completely normal to immediatelly sue the insurance for neck damage after getting rear ended, but naturally you must call the cops first. that would turn the tables completely...now i think that moron #1 and 2 are gonna get away with it, as well as the taxi driver.

[repenttokyo]

damn i think i'd be completely pissed of if i was there. what bothers me is...why didn't you call the cops after he rearended you? here it's completely normal to immediatelly sue the insurance for neck damage after getting rear ended, but naturally you must call the cops first. that would turn the tables completely...now i think that moron #1 and 2 are gonna get away with it, as well as the taxi driver.

you can't sue people in accidents in quebec, everyone is insured by the provincial government in terms of liability. you have to make a claim to the provincial organization that handles compensation.

[Ross]

Nice thing you tried to do for the girl. My money is on her getting screwed by the carwash owner anyway.
There is way too much litigation in the U.S. but these are the kinds of instance that call for it.
Moron #1 is now slicing tomatoes.

[525i winter driver]

damn i think i'd be completely pissed of if i was there. what bothers me is...why didn't you call the cops after he rearended you? here it's completely normal to immediatelly sue the insurance for neck damage after getting rear ended, but naturally you must call the cops first. that would turn the tables completely...now i think that moron #1 and 2 are gonna get away with it, as well as the taxi driver.

i was under the impression that police come to file a report at any accident where an ambulance is called... i think that's why the police showed up. (still not sure - i've lived in quebec eight years now and stuff happens that still surprises me) i wanted to make sure an official report of the accident was made in case anything came out of it - when the ambulance left i really wasn't sure what to do, we were talking about going to the police station when we spotted the police pull in. i figured if the boss tries to screw the girl over at least she has two credible witnesses to back her story up if it ends up in court or whatever. but she was going along with the story the morons were feeding. i dunno, it was so mental that by that point i was pretty much stunned by disbelief i couldn't figure out what the smartest thing to do would be. the police didn't take a statement but my info was recorded and there is a case# at least so hopefully she does ok and i never hear about it again.

there was no question my gf and i were ok. i spent last spring and half of the summer on my ass with my busted leg (+) and i'm not about to do that again by faking a neck injury... the paperwork is brutal!!!

[525i winter driver]

The woman was nice about it.

i would hope so

Moron #1 is now slicing tomatoes.

ewwwwwww seriously i'm never going to eat another raw tomato ever again after this last weekend