Help Mr. Wobbles Recoup after his Car Accident
Donation protected
Hey everyone, on May 18th, 2022 I got into a Rollover hit-and-run accident 1 block away from my house on a surface street at around 11:30 pm while driving to Taco Bell. I had the right-of-way on a green light, someone ran the red light and hit my back left bumper, throwing my car 15 feet with one complete flip that rendered me completely unconcious. On waking up post-accident around 3-5 minutes later, I was surrounded by people telling me not to move and the culprit had already left the scene of the incident. It took around 15 minutes for emergency services to show up, and when they did I ended up getting driven to the hospital where they found out I had a compressed neck/back, a concussion, and minor cuts all over my body...
(MY 4Runner Post Accident)
Somehow, I got hit by someone going 50mph on a side street... Flipped and completely ruined my vehicle, but ended up being ok in a medical sense. The police officer who helped me after my accident said it was. "amazing that I wasn't more injured considering the damage done to my vehicle." The only issue I had was for about 3 months post-accident it was near impossible to sleep, and that severely affected my ability to work and my mental health for a bit. But... I'm now trying to get back on the boat, unfortunately, the financial situation this has put me in has been relatively harrowing and I've tried everything I can do to reprimand how bad I got screwed from all of this but I feel like its a necessary evil to ask for help at this point.
Before I continue, here's an estimated amount of losses I had from this accident, which also completely delved into any savings I had...
- My brand new car was deemed a "Complete Loss" and I lost around 15k in equity that I had paid into it, and the payoff Geico delved out to me was less than (in my opinion) my car's worth, and didn't completely pay off my loan so I had to throw around 1.4k in to be able to seek a new car loan without past loans being present.
- I had to purchase a new vehicle, Which in the current used car market was an absolute smash to my savings. The cheapest (while also being something I wanted) car I could find was a 2010 Prius 2 located in Nebraksa 500 miles away for 13.2k with 95k miles on it. I went and purchased it with half down, which is what they wanted. Most other cars I could find in my specific area were either 20k+ from reputable dealers... or used car lots that do scammy loans with extremely high interest.
- After eventually being able to find the person that hit me (due to his license plate falling off his car, lol) I was unable to get a hold of his insurance, raising my premium for my own due to going through them and I've had to take the full brunt of my medical costs until his insurance can "get everything lined up." The guy who hit me is currently in a psych ward, and that was the only place his insurance was able to get a hold of him in the past 4 months. I haven't paid anything and am currently in talks with MY insurance, but due to the CAT scan and a few other procedures I had the night of the accident, the current tally is at around 25-30$k for my one night in the hospital. I'm sure I'll be able to get that greatly reduced but having that looming over my head has been wildly stressful as of late.
- I lost all the mods I had on my 4runner, which was something I was adamantly passionate about. I was planning on using this vehicle to travel/tour over the next year and had a full setup for video ideas being built in it. Including a rooftop tent, full rack, solar setup, camping setup, new shocks, new tires, etc. All of that was unable to be insured and was gone in a heartbeat due to the severity of damage I had on my car, the only thing I was able to retain was my sound system (which cost 500$ to get removed, then costs a lot to put back in my new car, lovely isn't it)
I've already sold quite a bit of my stuff to be able to keep everything going smoothly, as well as taking more commissions and doing exterior work outside of my usual bread-and-butter that I run through my platform... I'm not entirely screwed and I'm going to be able to bounce back from this slowly but surely as I get back into content creation, music, streaming and the likes. But, I also have come to terms with the matter of fact that this accident was not in my control, and there's been a lot of opportunities that I've had to forego in both life, content, and enjoyment due to the sudden loss of my savings and financial stability. I was already on a break when this happened, and the concurrent sleep issues made it nearly impossible for me to have the motivation to come back for a while. Now that I'm in a better place, I don't feel as ashamed asking for help and don't expect it either, but I feel like not putting this situation out there would be something I regret.
Thank you for reading through all of this and to everyone who supports me, and my content. I feel like this is a first step into being able to come back without so much looming over my head that I feel noone else knows, being open with my community has always been something I pride myself on. Stay wobblin FAM
Organizer
Austin O'Brien
Organizer
Sioux Falls, SD