Always call the police

The people who rear-ended me at a stop light last week are now refusing to file a claim with their insurance because supposedly I slammed on my brakes for no reason (at a red light, with a car coming) and therefore it's not their fault. And, since I was nice enough not to insist on calling the police and thereby ensuring that she would have received a ticket, they don't feel that they have to file a claim.

Funnily enough, until I got a quote and told them how much it was going to be, they wanted to just pay it out of pocket and be done with it. There was no question of fault at that point.

Unfortunately for them, their insurance allows me to file a claim on them. So I just did. Now the insurance company has to contact them and get their side of the story, and then a claims adjuster should be calling me within a couple of days (depending on how quickly they can get ahold of these people).

So the moral of this story is, take the ass chewing from the cops for wasting their time, make them file a report - and issue whatever tickets they feel the need to - regardless of how minor the wreck is.

A friend of mine was in a similar situation a couple years ago, she was rear-ended, and the guy that hit her said that she slammed on her brakes and he wasn't able to stop. (They had to call the police because she was injured and had to go to the hospital). Know what the cops told him? That it was his responsibility to keep enough distance between him and the car in front of him to stop. Period. What if a child had run out in front of her vehicle? A rear-end collision is just about a guaranteed fault.

So hopefully, the rest of this will go smoothly. If not, I'll have to get my insurance involved and then I'm sure it will be a nightmare.