"Juan Polk" wrote in message news:oC4Fb.221014$ snipped-for-privacy@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net... I have enjoyed posting to your newsgroup for the past few years, but recently a series of drunk drivers have put me on the sidelines maybe permanently. If any of you have had your vehicle "Totaled" by your insurance agency lately would you let me know if this is SOP for this procedure. I had my 1994 Pontiac Firebird Firehawk hit in the rear by a drunk driver in May. The car shut down at the time, and has not been successfully started with it's key since that time. I was hit in the rear three times by this driver who maybe had tried to ram me out of the way to drive off, but was stopped in traffic. Any way the situation is this the Police at the time came to the scene, and did a hasty investigation of the accident. They did not give me any information about the driver, and in tern let this driver drive away from the scene. I had to wait for 29 days to get, and read the accident report to find out the driver had no insurance, and license. The license, and address was completely falsified, and there is no way to find the driver since the cops did not take the license plate information from each vehicle. {Upper Darby Penna. Police Department} I contacted my carrier Allstate Insurance almost immediately after the accident, and reported the incident. The insurance company took my car to a prescribed body shop which did a horrible job on the body work, and absolutely no work on the damaged electrical system. They kept the car in the shop at the direction of Allstate for over 5 months. I just had the vehicle "towed" out of the shop two weeks ago after being in this shop since June of this year. The vehicle doesn't run, and I had taken it upon myself to repair it pending a lawsuit, but I have ran out of time, and money for the project. I am going to put her up for auction on E-Bay in January. Here is what I wanted to know: 1.. Did the police present you with the drivers information 2.. How long did it take you to get a Police Report 3.. Did your insurance company go after the driver at fault or did they only handle your vehicle 4.. Did they write off your vehicle for market value or lower compared to the Blue Book value of your car. If so what were you to do to make up the difference. 5.. If attempting to resolve your payment did they automatically value your 4Th. Gen as a "V-6" Minimum option vehicle. My 4Th. Gen SLP Firehawk is being remunerated as a 6 cylinder, 2 door coup. 6.. Would you recommend a good full service Insurance Company as opposed to Allstate Insurance Co. I just wanted to check out similarities between cases that may have been similar to my case between states. BTW If you have had better service from your Insurance Carrier what company would you rec.?. Mine was Allstate Insurance which I was on a "good driver" pgm for the last
12 years. BTW: The shitty body shop that did the so called work was Kenan@ Lumpkin Autobody
4536 Market Street, Philadelphia PA 19145 Stay out of there at all costs if you are ever in the area.
Have a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year to all at alt.autos.camaro.firebird this has been Firehawk 067 signing off forever Dec. 20 2003.
On November 30th, I got t-boned by a drunk driver who ran a red light. I was turning left, and the other vehicle was going about fifty. I was in my Bronco, and the impact knocked me over one hundred feet. Fortunately, I gunned it at the last second and leaped forward enought that the major impact was at my rear wheel instead of the passenger door. Knocked the wheels off and most of the axle. Totaled it, for sure. The first policeman on the scene found out where the vehicle was that had hit me. He came back to me and said the driver had taken off running across the desert. He said there was probably no insurance. The tow truck driver asked where I wanted the vehicle taken. I told him to take it to my place. I had just had shocks, tires, and other suspension work completed, plus I had a two thousand dollar stereo system in the truck. I figured I could at least salvage those things. The tow driver then went over to the policeman. He came back to me and said they had the owner of the truck and she was fully insured. I went over to ask the officer about that. He nodded his head, but he strangely stayed between me and the owner. I asked him about the information and he said it would be in his report. Since the owner was insured, and the cop said the liability would fall back to the owner if he didn't locate the driver, I asked if I was covered. He nodded again. So I had my truck taken to the tow yard where the insurance could take care of it. Three weeks later, after the truck was already listed in a lien sale, and I had gotten nothing for minor injuries or the truck, I finally got the police report. It showed the owner had no insurance, and it listed the accident as a hit-and-run. Even though California is a mandatory uninsured motorist coverage state, somehow, my policy didn't have it. There was a place where I had signed that apparently waived that coverage. I didn't know that I had signed that off, but the fact is, in my rush to get the vehicle insured, I had. My bad. So, I'm sitting here with nothing to drive, and I'm going to get squat. My vehicle is going to be auctioned at a lien sale, and the stereo and whatever else was left is history because I can't afford to buy my own truck back. I doubt this has much priority for the police so it seems to me that neither the driver or the owner is going to lose much except the damage to their vehicle. Oh, yea, the driver didn't have a license either, so chances of finding her are about nil. What the policeman said to me isn't in his report, so I've got nothing there. All in all, I lost the whole works, and my insurance company wouldn't even talk to me. They are Harbor Insurance Company, part of Carnegie Insurance. I had to hire a lawyer (yuck) to even find out why they weren't giving me UM payment on it. That's when I found out I had waived it. That's my fault, but the accident sure wasn't. Ain't a damned thing I can see that I can do about it, either. I'm kicking my own ass, but I sure would like to be kicking someone else's, too.