Ford vs. Honda

Back in July, Jim and Jacob were driving to Bev's rehab facility one evening for a visit. An ambulance with wailing sirens came up behind them, and Jim obediently reduced his speed and pulled over to the side of the road. Unfortunately, a Ford Focus following them did not slow down quickly enough, and rammed into the back of Jim’s Honda Civic. The teenaged driver of the offending vehicle was very apologetic, and Jim graciously chose to ignore the ding in his bumper since it was only about the size of a nickel. Jim did, however, sometimes gripe and whine about the cosmetic damage to his still-fairly-new car. My advice was to just leave it alone, because the dent was, in fact, scarcely even noticeable. (Official repair estimate: $400)

Last week on his way to work, Jim’s Civic was hit once again. This time it was sideswiped by a Ford Explorer that was changing lanes on the freeway. The driver evidently did not see that Jim was already occupying the lane he desired to be in, and his SUV collided with the Civic while attempting to merge. Jim filed a police report because that was the only way our insurance company would reimburse us for fixing these more obvious bangs and scrapes. (Official repair estimate: $1,200)

Yesterday evening, Jim and Jacob were on their way to Lowe’s when the Civic was struck for a third time. They were simply waiting at a red light, when a Ford F-150 pick-up plowed into them from behind. And using the term “plowed” is appropriate since it was a snowplow hitch-thingy on the front of the truck that actually caused the new damage to the Civic’s rear bumper. The driver never even apologized, and actually made light of the situation, saying, “Things like this happen all the time.” Well, yes, they do seem to happen to the Civic rather frequently. But hitting someone’s automobile, causing damage, then not even expressing a hint of regret seems somewhat discourteous to me. (Educated guess on repair estimate: $800)

So, although Jim is a very careful driver, he has become a bit paranoid about people continuously running into his car. Either the Civic has some sort of magnetic field that attracts other vehicles (Fords in particular), or it is just plain cursed. The insurance company will cover most of the $2,400 collision shop fee. And, they say that since none of the incidents were Jim’s fault, our insurance rates will not go up. (Har har, riiight!) Maybe we should not bother to have any of the dents repaired, and we can just enter the Civic in a Demolition Derby or something instead. We would barely even notice any additional scratches or bumps on the poor little sedan.