Or, Even Though You Hate Insurance Companies, Getting Collision Insurance Is Still Probably A Good Idea

By : Tony

Insurance is a complete scam. Insurance companies are betting on not needing to make good on their promise to help you. This is a legal form of racketeering that has been generally accepted by society. In late stage capitalism, it means that companies are charging as much as they can get away with, while still finding any reason at all to avoid actually helping anybody.

It is a predatory business model that has sprung from our desire for peace of mind and the hope that we won’t need to just eat the cost of wrecking some asshole’s Ferrari.

I say this because I want to explain my mindset as you follow me on the journey that I am about to unfold.

As of November 7, 2017, I had not been in any car accidents, let alone one that would total a vehicle. I had been driving for 17 years and dutifully paying out insurance each month without ever calling in on it. I don’t even want to think how much money that is. I was registering my car and getting a new insurance plan for it, and thinking, “You know, I am ideologically opposed to just handing money over to such a crooked system. I haven’t had any need for it so far, maybe I can just go with liability insurance and cut this bill in half.”

This is what people call tempting fate.

On November 14, a week later, a Tuesday, I was blinded by the morning sun and rear-ended a truck. My car was engulfed in flames about a minute later. I lost my glasses, a stack of D&D books, and a few other things, but ultimately I walked away from a burning car without a scratch. I refer to it as my 5th of 6 close calls with death (might be a later article).

I wasn’t going particularly fast, but the truck had a ball hitch that stuck out about 2 feet from his bumper, and it punched through the front of my car like a tankbuster. When I regained enough of my senses to realize what was happening, I found the airbags had all deployed, I could see under the hood, and there were flames coming from it. I have played enough video games to know that means the car is seconds from exploding (or at least, I wasn’t going to stick around to test that theory). I shifted into park, unbuckled my seat belt, grabbed my backpack, and then walked a short ways away to curl into a ball and cry.

Someone called 911, car burned hot enough to burst and then burn the tires. The police on scene kept asking questions like if I was drunk on this bright Tuesday morning at 8:30am, clearly headed to work. Because that’s what the police do. Eventually, the fire department put out my fireball of a car. One of them approached and chuckled saying “well, I think it’s totaled.”

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*crying intensifies*

I took the card of an officer, got the number and name of the other driver, exchanged insurance info, got the name of the towing company, and got a ride home. My insurance didn’t cover any of it, since it was liability only. A lot of people told me I was lucky to walk away. If the seat belt had caught, if the driver side door had stuck, if the ball hitch had hit a little farther up and to the left, if I had lost consciousness, or any number of other things, I might have died.

I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but I had a few really miserable months without any idea of how to get out from under the accident.

I live on a gravel road in the woods, which sounds lovely and romantic and everything. It is, sometimes. When you work downtown and don’t have a car and the nearest bus stop is 3 miles away, the ambiance can be somewhat diminished. The second half of November through April, I spent taking a Lyft to a bus stop, taking a bus to and from work, then taking a Lyft home. I would occasionally pack for a few days and couch-surf in town so I didn’t have to spend a laughable amount of money just to get to work.

“Why didn’t you just quit?” people ask. Like, I could have done literally anything but tread water. I had no savings, my student loan actually defaulted during that time so to this day I am not a person to be trusted with a credit card, let alone a car loan. I still had bills to pay, and there still wouldn’t be work within walking distance of my house. The last 3/4 mile to my house from my bus stop does not have a shoulder. It is a winding forest road, and very difficult to walk along. I know this, because one day I was too broke to get a Lyft and had to walk that last bit. I don’t think it was a sustainable way to get home, but it would have been a really great way to get turned into ground beef by a speeding Lexus.

When people talk about hopelessness, I don’t think a lot of people understand the physical weight the word can carry. I hear ‘hopeless’ and it brings back the miles-underwater-pressure I felt in those months. I spent the bus ride every day, staring out at the world and just feeling trapped. I got to work and told myself I was helping people, but really it was a magnificent way to distract myself from my life.

Finally in April I was able to buy a car at auction.

The reason it took so long was due to a string of mishaps that I would like to call Insurance Bad Faith, but I think ultimately was simply layers of negligence and apathy. Insurance companies have very little incentive to help people, and even less to do it in a timely manner.

My parents, who had owned the car before me (yes, privilege, I know), hadn’t lapsed their insurance on the car when I had the accident, so they were able to file a claim. I gave all of the information to them, showing the pictures of my burned-out husk of a car, the name of the towing company that took it to wherever (I was in shock, and my notes were very vague). The original claim investigator (Aimee Gower at Liberty Mutual. Fuck you Aimee and your unique and original spelling of ‘Amy’) went on vacation the week before Thanksgiving, and then I think there were about 2 days in December that she worked, and then she was on vacation again.

A new claim investigator (Brett Adams also with Liberty Mutual, fuck you, you two-first-name motherfucker) was assigned in December. I gave him all of the same information because it had apparently disappeared along with the previous insurance crony. A couple of weeks went by and I got an email stating that he had “tried numerous times” to contact the towing company and couldn’t seem to find the car. By mid January, he sent an email stating that it was starting to look suspicious that he couldn’t locate the car, and that he was “trying to avoid any more people getting involved” and then listed off a bunch of facts, that while previously explained, he decided to use to lightly hint at possibly being fraudulent.

I googled the towing agency and called the first place listed. I described the car and gave the license plate number, and within 10 minutes they told me they had it. To this day, I don’t know where Brett Adams was calling (May he spend eternity in the kafkaesque nightmare of bureaucracy that he currently inhabits, may he become painfully aware of how meaningless that existence truly is), but the towing company hadn’t been contacted yet by anybody. They mentioned that the car had racked up over $3000 in lot fees over the past 2 months, and were wondering who to send that bill to.

The insurance company eventually “did the right thing” and covered the lot fees out of the goodness of their hearts. Or settled them. Or swept them under the rug, I have no idea. The money still took a solid 2 months to show up, and I spent that time Lyfting to and from a bus stop, taking a bus and staring out at the world and feeling trapped.

In reality, I have been at far lower points in my life.

I have lived out of my car and had nothing but a bag full of change to live on. I still am the lowest paid, highest educated person that I know. Name one person you know with a doctorate that is working for minimum wage (That will be an article titled ‘Never Ever Ever Go To Law School’). That being said, those months that I spent staring blankly out into space while I rode the bus; those months that I went to a job that was slowly killing me because at least I could bury my head in the stress and not think about how fucked I was; those months where I had to just get by and know that my own ideals got me there, that was the most hopeless I have ever felt.

So in conclusion, if you don’t want to be absolutely crushed by the titanic weight of the existential crisis equivalent of tantric-sex, then I recommend going for that collision insurance. It won’t come in handy, but it will lessen the despair that comes when Murphy’s Law takes its toll.