background

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Oreo'd

Today Dustin was in a car accident in our beloved 11 year old 4runner. He was driving back to work after lunch and stopped on SR-92 for the construction traffic (they had people stopping traffic so large trucks/equipment could get on the road). Dustin was stopped, along with many other cars in front of him, for probably a full minute when all of a sudden - SMACK! Someone wasn't paying attention to the road (the driver at fault was actually "looking down"....guilty of texting?!) and he rear-ended Dustin going 40mph +. This pushed Dustin into the truck in front of him. He was "Oreo'd". The at fault driver had it the worst....all front air bags in his 1999 mini-van deployed. His front end was completely demolished from hitting the back of our 4runner (our hitch saved most our 4runner rear end!)....

This mini-van basically smashed in our rear bumper, cracked the hitch, and buckled the bed internally.





Now what about the front end? The man in front of Dustin was driving his MASSIVE 2008 truck - what saved his rear end? This big a$$ hitch!

His only damage was this tiny dent in the bumper.


But that big a$$ hitch did this damage to the front end of our 4runner:



Dustin obviously suffered some whiplash. After the accident we visited the PA at work to have him checked out. The PA did confirm whiplash, but didn't seem to think there was anything worse. He ordered a spinal x-ray to be safe and for documentation. Dustin was sore and didn't want to do much sitting for the next three days, but after that he felt back to normal.

Our 4runner is fixable - $2500 fixable to be exact! Now we just have to deal with the joy of insurance companies (5 days after the accident and the one at fault has yet to call his insurance company to report the incident).

1 comment:

Kelly said...

So do you know if the person was indeed texting? That would explain it! The moral of the story is to make sure you get a huge trailer hitch! Sorry about the property damage and whiplash, not to mention the inconvenience. I'm glad Dustin isn't worse off.