On a cloudy and slightly rainy Tuesday, I trekked down to the King Street Station to pick up Carrie and Ben to take them to Sea-Tac International Airport for their flights back to Malawi. I’m always a little worried driving alone, especially in downtown Seattle because there are all these hills. But a need arose, and I was able to be of help, so I planned the few hours between train station and airport. Before we headed to the airport, we stopped by the Renton Walmart, and there was a collision in the parking lot with a giant white van.<\/p>\n
I looked in my rear view mirror and turned around to look before putting the gear in reverse.<\/p>\n
I started backing out from my parking spot.<\/p>\n
I heard a honk.<\/p>\n
I stopped the car and turned around to look and there was a giant white van by my car, and we were partially in our respective parking spots.<\/p>\n
There are minimal scratches to our car, but there is a few on the other car’s bumper.<\/p>\n
There was a very angry Asian man getting out of the car and yelling. I thought we were blocking traffic, so I pulled back into my parking space for me to get out of the car to talk to the other driver. He was yelling and stayed in the middle of the road. He had his phone out and wanted to call the police, but we were under time pressure to get to the airport, so I let the other driver took a few pictures of my driver’s license, my passport, and my insurance card. He eventually pulled back into his parking spot and was willing to not call the police. Carrie was on the passenger seat and Ben was the passenger seat in the back, according to them, he was pulling out of his parking spot at the same time I was backing out, he didn’t see me just like I didn’t see him. Who knows? I didn’t notice him until I heard the honk, and I thought maybe it was just a close call because I didn’t feel the impact. Who knows when he saw me?<\/p>\n
Anyway, I was quite shook up after the incident. I’ve never been in a collision. I called Ri right afterwards, quite frankly I am surprised I even convinced the other driver to let us go to the airport. Now it’s the aftermath of dealing with insurance companies and such, this morning we had our estimator appointment. According to our Progressive insurance agent Ms. Bietz, the other car’s estimator appointment is set on Wednesday. I have given my statement to both insurance companies and I should hear back from our representative by Wednesday. Cathy said, the parking lot collisions are very common and since we didn’t take down any numbers and names of any witnesses, it is most likely to be 50% fault to each side.<\/p>\n
I spoke with Liberty Mutual’s representative Ms. Holmes, I called the day after the incident, and a Liberty Mutual employee told me to expect a call from Ms. Holmes soon, but she never called. Now, days later, she finally took down my statement. She also asked me if I wanted to ask for a claim from the other driver, I was hesitant, since the estimator had roll out $700+ damages, but we aren’t really gonna spend the money in repairing it since you can’t really tell anyway, so I told her no. But now I’m concerned if I should have made a claim to the other driver… We’ll see.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
*weeks later*<\/p>\n
So it’s finally resolved! Ironically, it was resolved on my birthday. All I wanted was for this to be over, so when it came back that it was deemed my fault, and our insurance had already compensated the other party, Ri and I are very fine with the decision. Thus concluding this scary chapter of the human experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On a cloudy and slightly rainy Tuesday, I trekked down to the King Street Station to pick up Carrie and Ben to take them to Sea-Tac International Airport for their flights back to Malawi. I’m always a little worried driving alone, especially in downtown Seattle because there are all these hills. But a need arose, …<\/p>\n