The week after Lillian was born [1] I was rear-ended by another driver while on my way home from campus. I reached an intersection and was going to turn left. A pedestrian entered the crosswalk [2] and since there was no turn lane, I stopped in the intersection. The driver behind me [3] wasn't looking and slammed into me going 30–35 mph. Thankfully, neither of us were injured. After my car was examined by a commercial appraiser and two independent appraisers (one from my insurance company and one from his) it was declared totaled.[4] So we bought a new car.
I'll start you out with some pictures of the old car (a 1995 Honda Accord) as it appeared after the accident. Other than the bend panel, it doesn't look that bad. But the appraisers all agreed that the shock absorbers inside the car looked like an accordion and would need to be replaced if I still wanted to drive the car.
Our new car, which we purchased from Brent Brown Toyota in Orem, is a 2004 Toyota Camry. I bought the old car before Leann and I got married, so it was a manual transmission. Even though I've taught Leann how to drive a stick shift, she doesn't like to, so this time we got an automatic transmission (cross your fingers). It has the latch system for car seats [5], which we appreciate. Still, the purchase ate up a lot of our savings, so hopefully this will turn out to be a car that will last us a long time and won't require any costly repairs.
Notes:
[1] To read about her premature arrival, start here.
[2] Even though she saw that she was peripherally a cause of the accident, she didn't stick around to witness to the police what had happened.
[3] Incidentally, his name was Matt, too.
[4] He admitted fault and his insurance company handled everything very professionally. They even gave us almost $1000 more than the Kelly Blue Book value for the car. So we don't have any complaints as far as that goes.
[5] See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LATCH.
I'll start you out with some pictures of the old car (a 1995 Honda Accord) as it appeared after the accident. Other than the bend panel, it doesn't look that bad. But the appraisers all agreed that the shock absorbers inside the car looked like an accordion and would need to be replaced if I still wanted to drive the car.
Our new car, which we purchased from Brent Brown Toyota in Orem, is a 2004 Toyota Camry. I bought the old car before Leann and I got married, so it was a manual transmission. Even though I've taught Leann how to drive a stick shift, she doesn't like to, so this time we got an automatic transmission (cross your fingers). It has the latch system for car seats [5], which we appreciate. Still, the purchase ate up a lot of our savings, so hopefully this will turn out to be a car that will last us a long time and won't require any costly repairs.
Notes:
[1] To read about her premature arrival, start here.
[2] Even though she saw that she was peripherally a cause of the accident, she didn't stick around to witness to the police what had happened.
[3] Incidentally, his name was Matt, too.
[4] He admitted fault and his insurance company handled everything very professionally. They even gave us almost $1000 more than the Kelly Blue Book value for the car. So we don't have any complaints as far as that goes.
[5] See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LATCH.
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