I didn't completely squish it. I was only going -3 mph. (backwards is minus mph you know)
It only squished the fender. I embellished in my last post because you embellished in yours. I actually paid him for the damage out of my pocket. It was around a grand.
I've never believed in letting inconvenient facts get in the way of a good story. As long as you're telling stories and not claiming they're factual. In ASCII, it's even more difficult to tell who's joshing or telling tall tales.
I actually paid him for the damage out of my pocket. It was around a grand.
Fair enough. I was actually a little upset when you said that his insurance paid it, but you paid for it, which was the menschy thing to do. I'm not Jewish, but I haven't found a better english word than mensch. So I use it. English will take words from anywhere.
The world would be a better place if more people just paid what they owed and didn't try to dodge it. And if people just asked for they owed and not the most they though they could get. No insurers, no lawyers.
Once in high school, I had a low-speed -- 2mph or so -- rear-end collision with another student. I don't know whether I rolled forward or he rolled back. We were both facing uphill, he had a stick, and working the clutch on a manual transmission is something teenagers tend not to be very good at.
His car was a recent-model (then) Mustang, mine a Dodge Dart older than me. He did a little yelling; I didn't fight the issue. I just said, let's take a look before we make a stink. "Just give me a chance to fix it before it becomes a thing," I asked. The only obvious damage was a smashed plastic tail light lens and a scrape on the plastic rear bumper.
I asked for the year of his car, drove out to the local junkyard, and pulled a replacement. I replaced all the bulbs in that housing just to be sure, and then checked that they worked. Then I rubbed out the minor scuffs on his bumper. Twenty minutes and twenty dollars -- and that's an outside estimate, it was probably more like ten and ten -- and everyone walked away happy. I shudder to think what that could have turned into had attorneys or insurers gotten involved.
Another time, I was driving home from school, racing with a buddy. Not drag racing or anything, just jockeying, because we were young and stupid. I hydroplaned, hopped a curb, took out a mailbox, and landed in a bush. The bush and the car were pretty much unharmed.
The homeowner in whose yard I was parked looked at the mailbox, at me, at the car, at the bush, back at me, and said in a perfectly calm voice, "son, looks like you owe me a mailbox."
I asked the guy not to rat me out to my parents. I wrote down my name, address and phone number, which he verified by asking for my license. he wrote down y insurance information. I said I'd be by in a few days, and please don't call before then.
Three or four days later, I went by and knocked on his door, ready to do what's right. His mailbox wasn't broken, the post merely dented and uprooted. He'd already straightened and replanted it, and told me to just go home.