rear-ended by an idiot

Monday August 9th 2004 01:46 AM PST

Jen and I were going to have a nice little dinner at Trio tonight. We've been trying to lay low for the weekend and relax, but we thought we would get out of the house for once. I got down to Huntington Drive and Garfield and headed East on Huntington. I came to a light at Granada and stopped. At this point i am in the rightmost lane and the first car at the light. There are a couple cars beside me in both lanes. At this point, Trio is a little over a block away, and i can see the parking spaces for it are ALL empty. Jen and I are already talking about it. We think at this point that they may have gone out of business. The light turns green and a proceed East. The light at Oak Knoll a block later is also green and i proceed through the intersection. On the other side of the intersection I begin to signal that i am going to pull over and park. Now at this point i am already slowing down. I never had a chance to get above 40MPH and my approach to the parking place i've chosen is nothing but nice and slow. I know this because the entire time i'm trying to figure out why there is nobody parked there, and why there is nobody in the restaurant. The parking places are the kind of spaces set at a 45 degree angle from the street. Huntington has 3 lanes of traffic, then almost a full lane of space between traffic and the actual parking places. I pull nicely into a space and am approaching the curb with my bumper, when... Jen and I hear the screech. A half second later we find ourselves being pushed sideways and up onto the curb. The guy behind me was not paying attention at all and inadvertently followed me as a moved to my right in order to park. By the time he pulled his head out of his ass, he was already on top of us going about 35MPH. Jen and I were a little shaken, but we got out of the car, and I asked the guy driving if everybody was alright. He and his 8- year-old daughter were in the car. At this point he did not seem at all concerned with his own daughter. He just needed the time to start yelling at me. His daughter is really shaken up and he could give a fuck less. Jen gets on her phone and calls San Marino Police. She gets somebody on the phone and explains the situation, tells them that there are no injuries, and asks if they could send an officer. Meanwhile Mr. Brains just calls 911 and starts to say that he needs Paramedics for his daughter. Jen and I already know this is going to be a really fun situation to deal with. So we start to exchange information. Thank (insert your favorite deity here) that the San Marino Police showed up. (now that is the first time i've ever said that). 3 Officers show up and really do the best job i think they could have. They questioned Mr. RearEnd and calmed him down. They were extremely helpful in explaining all the options that I had. AND FINALLY, they were smart about all the evidence right there in front of everybody. They took time to measure skid marks, note positions of the cars, the point of impact etc. The one office that was taking a statement from me and Jen gave us the option of having the insurance companies deal with the investigation, or let the SMPD deal with it and the report. I could tell with their observations of the crash scene that they would be in the best position to document what was there. I will now retract all evil statements i have ever made about the SMPD during my lifetime. They were more than helpful while working with us.

On the subject of Trio. They're closed for the summer. :( So after all that we didn't get a good meal. I guess its a lot better that they were closed. Nobody was on the sidewalk or on the street in that block of San Marino when the accident happened.

My car was hit in the back right wheel. It was turned inward so now it looks like a good deal of body work will need to be done to the car. We got it towed back home, and we'll deal with it when we can.

Comments:

What a fucking ass-clown. *He* rear-ends *you* and he's the one who's upset?! I fucking hate LA drivers. Grrr!!! I'm glad to hear that you guys are okay though!

Posted by: Koganuts

Man, that sucks, but I'm glad you two are alright. Just out of curiosity, what was the other driver's complaint? What was his reasoning for being upset about rear-ending someone who was pulling over to park?

Posted by: Yams