This past week I experienced my first accident. Technically it wasn’t my accident because I wasn’t there, but it was my car. My first car incident occurred when my mother was pregnant with me. A couple years ago I backed into a family friend’s Camry from the 80’s, but they decided to retire it - problem solved. I label this past week’s incident as my first accident because I made the accident of lending my friend my car. Worst of all, I live in Los Angeles, so traffic is unforgiving. Essentially nothing is coming out of my pocket, as my friend has agreed to pay out of hers, but that’s not to say this experience has been easy by any means.

Over the phone, my friend told me she was part of a chain reaction that ended up with her hitting a BMW X5 . I assumed she had been smashed from the rear as well. She warned that the damages were bad and apologized profusely. When I ended up seeing my 1995 Toyota Camry (nicknamed Blue Pearl), I sighed in relief. The rear of the vehicle was fine. My friend was the last car in the chain. The front of the car wasn’t terribly bad. My hood was bent, the grill was shifted backwards, and my left headlights had been pushed back and broken. My imagination had prepared me for the worst and I had experienced about half of that. Not as bad as I thought, but bad is bad.

What should I do? I’d never been in this situation before. Call my insurance? Call her insurance? Call a friend for advice? I’ll refer to my friend as Sally for convenience. I ended up doing all three. Did my insurance cover the damages? Yes, sir. Did her insurance cover the damages? No, sir. Screwed. So I called my mentor for advice. He said if the repairs were minor enough I could just pay out of pocket to avoid unnecessary insurance involvement.

But what shop or dealership was I supposed to go to? I Googled all the nearby Toyota dealerships, only to find that each one had extremely poor reviews. The only positive reviews were from folks who needed oil changes. Anything more and service was questionable. No, thank you. I’ll take a private auto shop. I emailed all of my email contacts and called all of my auto enthusiast friends in the area for advice. I ended up picking a place in Rosemead, CA. My good friend praised the shop’s good quality work and friendly boss. He added that they did work for car shows, which somewhat soothed my worries.

Where was my friend during all of this? Probably doing some work of her own. No help whatsoever. I was on my own, thank you very much.

Another friend of mine (Teresa) and I drove 45 minutes through ridiculous Los Angeles traffic to get to the body shop. I made a huge mistake by not thoroughly checking the front of my car before we took off. Sally told me she opened the hood twice and assured me it could open and close with ease. The problem was, it opened too easily. The latching system was misaligned and I had no idea. I really should have checked. About 10 minutes into our journey, my hood flew up and blocked my view, except for a few portions on my extreme left and right sides. Hazard lights on. Step on the brakes. Pull over into residential area. Luckily, Teresa drove a truck with a bunch of rope that I could use to fasten my hood shut. I crawled under my car and made it work. The frame of my car had been bent and I feared the worst for Sally’s wallet. She was under the false impression the hood could be bent back into place and the situation would be fixed. She estimated a sub-$200 fix. Yeah, right. Onward the journey continued.

I get to the shop, which I’ll refer to as Al’s Auto, and quickly found the nearest employee to ask for help. Unfortunately, the owner, Al, was out for the day and wouldn’t be back for another couple days. I didn’t want to drive my car back home 45 minutes only to have to drive it back again later in the week. In addition, I didn’t want my friend to have to escort me again. So I ended up leaving my car at the shop for an estimate and taking off with Teresa to conquer the I-10.

After 3 days of continuous calls to the shop, Al was finally in for a day and gave me an estimate over the phone. The plan was to replace the grill, headlight, and hood and reshape the front of the car’s frame. An $800 repair, which was a lot less than my paranoid self had estimated. If you hadn’t realized already, I’m not even a beginner when it comes to car repairs.

The car is currently in the shop, and Al reassured I’d get my car by July 4th, which is when my relatives might visit. This ordeal is far from over and I can only hope the rest of this experience runs smoothly. Sally still has to work out the repairs for the X5 and I don’t want to have get involved in that. I’m quite certain repairs for the BMW will be a multiple of my Camry’s repair costs. While my pockets may be protected, I’ve lost a lot of work hours trying to figure out this whole situation. Wish me luck.

Lesson Learned,

ededsu