So. I collided with a mail truck.
Donation protected
That car up there is mine. It looks that way because a mail truck pulled out from a side road in front of me. Turns out mail trucks are (a) made of wrought pig iron, which is why my 35mph crash looks more like 50mph, and (b) they don't have insurance in the way that other vehicles do.
See, federal vehicles like that are treated differently, which is a way of saying that you put in a claim to the post office and they have six months to accept or reject it. If they reject it, you have to sue the federal government.
Now, I was on the major road, the mail truck pulled out from a side road with a stop sign and the driver admitted they didn't see me due to the mirrors creating a blind spot. But the claim still takes time to process, and in that time we are without a car of our own.
We have two boys, one aged 5 and another 18 months. Luckily they weren't in the car. But their car seats were. So those car seats need to be replaced too.
A friend has lent me her car for the next two weeks, so not all the expenses are going to hit us at once. We can avoid having to rent a car and then add that to the claim for two weeks. But after that, we have a potential of five and half months car rental. $31.77 per day, which my insurance will cover a portion of (as yet unknown, potentially zero) leaving me to foot the bill for the rest and then claim back against USPS down the line.
My laptop was thrown around in the trunk badly enough that the screen is trashed. So there's another expense I wasn't expecting.
The physio is covered by my medical insurance, but $25 co-pay each session (two a week for 4-6 months) yet again unexpected.
I am lucky that I get to work from home, so we aren't losing the main income. But my wife can't work until we are back on the road. So, lost earnings there.
I will continue updating this as we go. For now, thank you for reading.
See, federal vehicles like that are treated differently, which is a way of saying that you put in a claim to the post office and they have six months to accept or reject it. If they reject it, you have to sue the federal government.
Now, I was on the major road, the mail truck pulled out from a side road with a stop sign and the driver admitted they didn't see me due to the mirrors creating a blind spot. But the claim still takes time to process, and in that time we are without a car of our own.
We have two boys, one aged 5 and another 18 months. Luckily they weren't in the car. But their car seats were. So those car seats need to be replaced too.
A friend has lent me her car for the next two weeks, so not all the expenses are going to hit us at once. We can avoid having to rent a car and then add that to the claim for two weeks. But after that, we have a potential of five and half months car rental. $31.77 per day, which my insurance will cover a portion of (as yet unknown, potentially zero) leaving me to foot the bill for the rest and then claim back against USPS down the line.
My laptop was thrown around in the trunk badly enough that the screen is trashed. So there's another expense I wasn't expecting.
The physio is covered by my medical insurance, but $25 co-pay each session (two a week for 4-6 months) yet again unexpected.
I am lucky that I get to work from home, so we aren't losing the main income. But my wife can't work until we are back on the road. So, lost earnings there.
I will continue updating this as we go. For now, thank you for reading.
Organizer
Peter Jones
Organizer
Snohomish, WA
