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Tuesday, 21 December 2004
Careful what you wish for ::
As my employer’s stock soared with the temperatures this past summer, it seemed that a crop of new cars gradually popped up in the parking lot. I wondered why anyone would spend $40,000 on a car. I was more or less happy with my 1991 Toyota Corolla for which I’d paid $3500 cash 4 years ago. Never mind that the interior door handles are all broken, the driver’s window doesn’t quite close properly, that little ding in the windshield has grown to a crack, the right front fender is dented, and it needs a paint job. Secretly I was a little jealous and thinking about how to rationalize buying a newer car.
Friday night was the annual ex-Opcode Christmas dinner. I headed north from Sunnyvale on Central Expressway. I approached San Antonio in south Palo Alto. Odd, the traffic light was blinking red. I came to a stop behind a couple of cars and waited my turn. The car in front of me and the one next to it in the right lane went. Whose turn was next? I looked at the cars stopped from other directions as I accelerated a little, and braked to stop at the line. Jeez, the car next to me had followed the one in front of it without stopping. People drive so aggressively sometimes.
BOOM! My head was jerking forward and back, and the shoulder belt was strangely constrictive. This seemed to go on for a minor eternity, but it was probably less than 5 seconds before I realized, I’d been rear-ended. The traffic light was no longer blinking red; it had turned green.
Aside from a raging stream of adrenalin, I seemed to be fine.
Who was this idiot who’d plowed into me? For a moment, I was angrier than I can remember having been in a very long time. Then I remembered having rear-ended someone while leaving work on a Friday evening last December. I cooled off. Accidents happen.
The shoulder belt didn’t want to let me open the door to which it was attached, so I fumbled with the buckle, detached it, and finally got out of the car.
Behind me was a late-model Jeep Cherokee. A young blonde woman was behind the wheel and seemed to be digging in her glove compartment. I inspected the damage. The Jeep’s bumper had completely missed the Toyota’s, indenting the trunk by maybe 6 inches. The trunk was open and couldn’t be closed. My license plate was strangely black. I touched it and realized that it was the back of her license plate holder, which had precisely attached itself to my license plate. Good aim. I pulled it off.
By the time I’d called the cops and we got our cars moved out of the left lane, to the right, I’d calmed down considerably. The young woman and I exchanged contact and insurance information. She was very apologetic. I told her the story of how I’d rear-ended someone last December. I joked that I’d been looking for an excuse to buy a new car anyhow. As we watched drivers making dangerous maneuvers to avoid our cars, which were partially blocking the right lane (no shoulder there), I joked that maybe someone was going to plow into both of our cars and then their insurance would have to pay.
I found myself driving quite cautiously to the restaurant and to a party in San Francisco. Every now and then I’d go over a bump and hear the trunk flapping up and down.
Saturday morning I called my insurance company and then hers. It didn’t take more than 30 or 45 minutes. I surfed the net pricing used cars, but thought to myself, maybe her insurance will just fix mine, ideally, while I’m in NY for Christmas, and I won’t have to go through the hassle of buying another.
Yesterday morning I went to the collision repair place recommended by the insurance company. The estimate was $3500—what I’d paid for the Corolla. The estimator said it probably wouldn’t be economically feasible to repair it. I drove to work and Google informed me that what happens in this case is that the insurance company just buys the car at its previous book value. When I saw that the tradein value would be something like $750 it was not a big leap to assume that this car wasn’t going to get repaired.
At lunch I told my coworkers I’d had an example of being careful of what one wished for—I’d been vaguely wishing for a new car but it had taken the Corolla getting totaled to get me to shop for one.
After lunch I took care of a few things then set to surfing the used-car web sites again. I made a list of places to go and cars to see, and took off. I drove a used 2003 Corolla and a 1997 RAV4, and liked them OK, the RAV4 a little better because it’s manual and has a roomier interior, but didn’t fall in love. I continued east on Stevens Creek toward a dealer that had a used Subaru Outback, but came to the VW dealership and stopped on an impulse. They didn’t have any older used cars in the price range I mentioned, but for only 25% more than the 2003 Corolla there were 2005 Jettas on sale. I took one for a drive and it was addictive. At 7:30 pm I was driving it home.
On the way to work I’ll stop by a car stereo place and see about a kit to connect an iPod to the CD changer port of the factory stereo head—my old cassette adapter provoked “TAPE READ ERR” messages from the Jetta. I had abysmal luck with an FM transmitter in the Corolla. And being able to control and power/charge the iPod from the car’s head seems ideal.
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