Funeral Home Accident
On 5/8/2004, Courtney and I went to her parent's house to pick up their truck. We had to go to Lancaster to get 1/2 ton of landscaping stone for our house. We were going to take the truck out of the garage and put my car into it because there was a funeral later that morning and I didn't want to take up a parking spot. However, right after we got there, the Hurst pulled in behind my car to unload the casket. Since Courtney and I both had other plans later on that morning, we just gave the keys to her dad to move it if need be because we needed to get going. So Courtney and I went to get the stone and stopped for more flowers at Giant. On the way home, we got a call from Courtney's parents and they told me that one of the funeral helpers moved my car and some how ran it into a metal fence. He said he couldn't reach the brake pedal and he didn't want to mess up the seats. I just told him that he messed up a lot more than the seats and we think his foot just slipped of the brake pedal.
Anyway, I pulled back into the parking lot to find my car stuck on a metal fence between the in-law's garage and a dumpster in their neighbor's yard. The way the car hit the fence, one of the metal posts caused the bumper cover to tear off the driver's side of car and become severely scratched and gouged by the metal chain links. But the worst damage came from the metal pipe railing. It hit the hood and scratched it down to bare metal and made a foot long dent. Then it went up the windshield and scratched the window and part of the roof before coming to a rest beside the car and putting some paint chips in the rear door. Somehow it threw off the alignment too. There were also scratches on the drivers side front fender and drivers side mirror.
Here are pictures from that day.
In the third picture, you can see the pipe that did the most damage. In the end, I'll have a new hood, new windshield, a new bumper cover, new set of grills, and a bunch of paint. I'm taking this opportunity to get a custom fiberglass ram air hood since the cost is pretty much the same as an original hood. Here's a picture of the hood I am getting.
So I dropped it off at Roy's Body Shop on 5/24 for them to fix. I checked out the hood when I dropped it off and it looks perfect and the body shop was impressed by its quality. I then stopped by again on 5/28 to see the progress and the hood and bumper cover was off and the fenders were prepared to be re-painted. On 6/3, I stopped by again and this time everything was done except the hood.....it was still drying and needed to be installed. I am expecting the car to be done on June 8th.......a full month after the accident happened.
And that's it.....I think it will look even better once it is fixed up. In the meantime, I'm driving my in-laws truck, their Vette, and their Grand Marquis. I also drove my sister-in-law's '96 Jetta GLX. As far as insurance goes, the funeral home's insurance should be paying for it, but I feel more comfortable with my insurance paying for it then fighting to have their insurance to pay them back. I'll keep updating this page as things develop.