A little accident

· life ·

[Sunday 23rd March]

Today I had my first ever motor accident. And it happened in a foreign country and in a hire car. Mr. Butshesagirl and I were leaving the conference hotel to visit Okechobee, and a colleague asked if she could follow us in her hire car, as she was a bit nervous about navigating on her own and she was going in the same direction as us. I was just waiting at the exit to the car park -- minding my own business -- when there was an almighty bang and we got thrown forwards. I couldn't work out what had happened at first, then I realised that my colleague had run into the back of me. At least we knew each other and were still at the hotel. The duty manager called the Police as our rental companies both said we needed to get a police report. The Police told him to call Highway Patrol. Highway Patrol said it was nothing to do with them as it wasn't actually on the highway, so we gave up and filled out a hotel incident report instead. Finally -- after a few hours -- we finally got under way again, a bit shaken up, a little dinged, but otherwise OK.

By the way, modern cars are rubbish. In my old Hillman Imp, an impact like that wouldn't have caused any damage. The impact of the rear car would have just bounced off the sturdy steel bumpers. This piece of junk Chevy got a dented bumper and big flakes of paint peeled off the plastic. They don't make 'em like they used to.