Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
Where are Kevin and Ruth now? Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

Where are Kevin and Ruth going next? Kuwait City, Kuwait on March 31st.

Friday, October 26, 2012

Crash!

Well, what a difference a day makes. Woke up to a cold and overcast day. Went for a walk and it started raining. Soaking wet feet. Then our couchsurfing host Christina offered to take us for a drive to show us some sights. Then someone crashed into us. Hard. Let me tell you all about our day...

We did enjoy walking around the neighborhood. Christina lives in a nice part of Cincinnati, about 10 miles from downtown. She gave us a route to follow where there are some really nice houses and old trees.

Christina had lent us some umbrellas. Good thing!

Lots of houses decorated for Halloween.

A rainy fall day.

We kept walking even though it was raining. Ended up getting soaking wet feet. Not the nicest walk, but we were glad we went. Christina works from home and had a conference call that ended around 2:00pm. It was still raining, so it wasn't a great day to see the sights, but we figured we had to see some of Cincinnati.

We offered to take our car, but Christina has a company car and said no, we'll take hers. So Ruth got in the front passenger seat and I hopped in the right rear. We got onto the main road where the speed limit is about 30mph (50 kmh). 

We were stopped at a red light, with several cars ahead of us, and one guy behind us. We heard a crash and  a split second later we REALLY heard a crash...because we got hit!

I mean, hit hard. Like the back of your head slams into the headrest type of hard. Then, we hit the car in front of us.

I got out right away and started taking pictures. I guess because I had the camera in my hand in anticipation of doing some touring, and it was really kind of irrelevant. The old lady who ran into the guy behind us was still driving her car and it almost looked like she was driving away. So I took a pic of her car and licence plate. Turns out she was trying to get out of the way of the traffic. It's funny how your system reacts in a situation like this. The guy who ran into us was out of his car and  seemed really unsteady on his feet. I went and helped him back into his car and got it shut off because the engine compartment was starting to smoke. I used to own a collision repair shop, and I'd say his car is likely a write off. He was complaining that his head hurt so I'm not sure if he was wearing his seat belt. 

While I was helping the guy behind us, Christina had called 911 and so had a few bystanders. My first picture had been taken at 2:29pm.

This was only seconds after it happened. This is the guy behind us who had got out to inspect the damage to his car. We had been in the red car. You can see Ruth on the right side kind of the picture checking her neck. It was a pretty hard hit.

And then we waited.

The guy behind us was a little disoriented, and it didn't help that it was raining. We all sat in our cars, but the old lady who ran into him was trying to tell everybody how sorry she was. We also had run into the lady in front of us, but only a few scratches on her bumper.

And we waited.

It took 25 minutes for a cop to show up from the time of the first picture. No ambulance. No emergency vehicle. There could have been someone bleeding to death, and nobody showed up. Strange.

Finally, a cop shows up. She says, okay, lets move all the vehicles out of the way. Now, this guy behind us who got hit harder than us, his car should be towed. No way should it have been driven. Even Christina's rear bumper was rubbing hard on our tire. Really, it shouldn't have been driven either. This was the strangest cop I have ever met. We ended up sitting about an hour while the cop took the reports and info from everybody.

Poor Christina, it's her first time hosting through couchsurfing and it pours with rain and her car gets ran in to! Not her fault at all of course, but we never did get to see Cincinnati! As we explained, at least it wasn't boring!

So, this cop then says follow me to the bodyshop. Huh? That would never happen in Ottawa. But we did. Then, the cop says "that guy in the black car must have had drugs in it because the guy only wanted to have it towed to his home". Huh? What kind of talk is that coming from a cop to someone who just had an accident. Very strange.

I figure the cop was getting a payoff from the bodyshop. It's the only explanation.

Christina's car. Given the hit, I'm surprised it's not worse. But I'd say there's some frame damage.

By this time, it was about 4:30pm and so we ended up driving back from the bodyshop to home, where Christina called her company and reported the damage and called the insurance company. 

Anyhow, life is never boring and everybody seems okay. Not sure about the guy in the black car, but the cop sure wasn't sympathetic. She seemed annoyed that the old lady (who shouldn't have been driving!) had caused all this problem to begin with. 

So, we don't have anything to report on Cincinnati. I guess we'll have to come back some day. Tomorrow, we're on to see Sam and Donna in St. Louis!


34 comments:

  1. wow glad you are all ok and it wasn't worse than it was..you will all definitely be sore tomorrow..thankfully it wasn't your car that would have been a mess to straighten out...not that its good that it was Christina's car...but at least she's an american with american insurance....hope you are all not too sore tomorrow...

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    1. When we got back to Christina's, she called her work and her work's insurance company and they were both great and put her at ease. That alone made up for the cop that she had to deal with.

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  2. my goodness..glad it wasn't any worse!..hope you are all feeling okay!

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  3. Sorry that you cannot stop in Indiana to meet with us. Another time, I am sure!

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    1. Sorry we couldn't met up either, maybe the next time we will cross paths.

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  4. Oh, my gosh - we just sat down to read what you were doing when CRASH! popped up - so, so sorry!

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  5. Will you be coming through Jefferson City? Or you going more south of here?
    Patti
    tappel(at)embarqmail(dot)com

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    1. I don't think we will be this time Patti. We really need to start heading south. Hopefully our paths will cross sometime in the future.

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  6. Very strange indeed.....keep those photos!! You know I know al about it.

    Meanwhile I am very very concerned about both of you and possible whiplash. I STRONGLY suggest you get checked out before heading on, just in case.

    So very sorry you had to have this happen.

    Hugs!

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    1. We are fine Contessa, we really are fine. If for one minute we thought that we had a problem we would definitely get it checked out.

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  7. Oh my goodness. I hope you got the name and badge number of the cop and Christina will report her and file a complaint. What totally unprofessional behavior. 25 minutes to get there is just something the police chief needs to be called on the carpet for. I hope the two of you are all right. Those neck things can be really terrible.

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    1. Christina does have the officer's name and badge number but she doesn't think it would do any good. Apparently they are understaffed. We also thought that 25 minutes was unexceptable, we were just happy that nobody seemed hurt, although we still think the guy in the little black car should have been checked out.

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  8. Sure hope that you guys are all okay tomorrow. Sure makes you hope you never are in an accident in Cincinnati - 25 minutes with injuries. Holy cow!

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  9. Glad to hear you're all OK ... wouldn't hurt to get checked out after a crash that hard and I would highly encourage that you do so before continuing your trip.

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    1. So far we seem fine, so for now we will just leave things as they are.

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  10. Glad all is ok with you guys,and it just happened to be one of those days. Travel safe today.

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  11. These thing happen but thank God everyone was ok, cars can be replaced!!! (No Dukes of Hazzard antics). Sorry Christina's first couchsurfing adventure has been so eventful.
    Hope you have a much better day today.

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    1. We are happy that everyone was OK as well. We asked Christina if her first couchsurfing was a "smashing" success. I think despite that, she had a good couchsurfing experience.

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  12. Wow...what a day. I'm glad it wasn't any worse than it was. The smoke coming from the other car was likely from the airbag deployment. They usually will cause a little "smoke".

    If you do decide you need medical care in the next few days,it won't matter if you get it done in another state for the purpose of the claim. I don't know about Mexico though. You may very well be pretty sore on a day or two afterwards.

    Glad it wasn't your car.

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    1. The air bag in his car never went off, if you can believe that. It turned out that his car was still running and something was rubbing on something else and that was causing the smoke. Once Kevin turned the other guy's car off it stopped smoking.

      We will keep that in mind if either of us feels any effects of the accident in the next few days. So far, so good.

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  13. okay, maybe we won't go thru cincinatti...

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    1. We never did get to see Cincinatti, so not really sure if we missed anything worthwhile. According to Christina we didn't.

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  14. Glad you are both ok, you might be pretty sore tomorrow from getting slammed so hard.

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  15. Peter was just in an accident with a newbie driver, all the kids fault but still our car was a complete write off. this happened at 7:00 am on a Thursday, no one stopped to see if they were hurt or to be a witness. sad times we live in.

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    1. I hope Peter is fine! Sorry about the car. We did notice that a lot of people were on there phones probably calling 911 and a couple of people did stop to make sure everyone was OK but it took ages for any kind of "emergency" vehicle to show up.

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  16. Wow-that was an exciting day. Glad no one was seriously hurt. There must be a lot of strange cops put there. My only accident was when our new motorhome was hit by a drunken driver in Louisiana. The cops there were very odd and my insurance company indicated they never trust the police reports from that state-go figure:)

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    1. Yep, definitely an exciting day. We definitely left shaking our head with this cop, just about everything she did and said just didn't seem professional.

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