Just 1 of those days

Had a kid in a borrowed SUV miss a curve and go flying off the road at our place the other day. The road is higher the our pasture by about 10 feet. The SUV rolled multipile times for about 100 yards before it hit a tree. Kid was not wearing a seat belt and got ejected pretty early in the rolls. We didn't hear the crash but for some reason I had the tractor on that road a few minutes after he had wrecked. Found him kind of wandering around. He didn't appear hurt but after I chatted with him for a few seconds it was obvious he had some serious head injuries. I hurried to the house and we called for help. Then I headed back. He had laid down in some rocks not far from the road. Talk about the wrong place. There is lots of copperheads in those rocks. I saw 2 of them and got him out of there and moved out of there. About that time the first responders showed up. Most of them only live less then a mile from us. They took real good care of him. Besides the head injuries he had a broken ankle, ribs, etc. Wasn't good. They also had to check him real close for snake bites but they didn't find any. He wasn't sure if there had been anyone else in the SUV so we had to check quite a bit of pasture looking for others. And try to check the inside of the car but that was real tough as it wasn't sitting very solid and if moved would probably roll some more. Didn't find anybody else.

He took out a whole bunch of my new fence. And my pasture is littered with all sorts of debris like glass, plastics, beer bottles, etc... We ended up having to take down even more fence on the other side of the pasture to get the SUV out of there. I had to get the tractor down there to roll the car back on it's wheels so it could be removed from the pasture. Needless to say, the SUV was totaled. Wasn't a straight body part left and the roof was crushed especially in the back.

Going to take us days to fix fence and pick up glass. Can't have the glass in the pasture with grazing animals. This was on sunday. We had bought a herd of goats on saturday and they were to be delivered to that pasture monday morning. Guess not. They are all in a small pen for a few days. We did pick up some debris after the wreck. Kind of interesting what you will find. Lots of beer bottles, ashtray and rolling papers. Go figure.

The grass in the pasture is about 2 feet tall. We are just covered in chigger bites from that. We're talking hundreds of bites on each of us. Now that sucks.

Now, the SUV belonged to his girlfriends father. Nobody had insurance. And I heard that the father wasn't a real pleasant fellow to start with. Sure would hate to be that kid about now. Pretty sure he's going to be in the hospital for awhile.

Randy

Reply to
rjmacres
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Damn...sorry to hear it Randy... i hope you can eventually recover something for the damaged fence... insured or not the driver or the owner of the vehicle should be responsible, yes?

Reply to
Joey Tribiani

Yep, they should be responsible but things don't always work that way down here. I will give them a day or 2 more to contact me then I will fix the fences and clean the pasture. And then I will send them a bill for all the supplies and my usual hourly rate. I'm guessing 5-10 hours to fix fence and at least that to clean the pasture. And at my usual hourly consulting rate. And my rates are high, especially when it's a job I don't want to do.

Randy

Reply to
rjmacres

no need to wait... I used to do large quantities of work in the restoration field and worked closely with insurance agencies.... any work to the fences would be considered emergency since the fences are there to contain livestock. you can repair then bill for payment... i know you said they didn't have insurance, and not sure of the laws in your neck of the woods, but in my experience when insurance didn't pay due to lack of coverage, or no insurance you can either foot the bill and hope for the best on getting paid, or file with your own personal "home-owners" insurance and then they will go after whoever they feel owes... just options... hope you don't get left doing the work and no reimbursement.

Reply to
Joey Tribiani

Would it not be a good idea to let the owner of the said vehicle, to get a chance to come clean and pay for damages before mailing a bill? I trust noone, but a day or two seem fair??

J.

Reply to
P.J. Berg

Trying to track the driver down and/or the owner of the SUV down has been a royal pain in the butt. Yep, they can come clean it up and fix the fences but they also have to meet my approval and I'm kind of anal retentive about those things.

Randy

Reply to
rjmacres

And it's also costing me money each day that pasture is sitting empty and unusable. That means I can't put animals there to graze and ending up having to feed them hay. And hays not cheap these days.

Randy

Reply to
rjmacres

Horrible turn of events! Sorry for you! Thank goodness the animals, or your family, were not in the field when this idiot came through it. ;-)

Reminder................... Get lots of pictures, estimates, receipts and keep some of the debris just in case you need it for court.

One time my family and I witnessed a bizarre accident. A driver in a small car passed me on the right side of a six lane (3 lanes northbound and 3 lanes southbound) street with a large middle divide. He abruptly turned left in front of me (I was in the middle lane) cutting in front of me, the other lane and while going too fast could not stop went up over curb, over the divide (about 25+ feet) across the 3 lanes of oncoming traffic missing all of the vehicles. Then he drove the car over a small brick wall, into a large plate glass window of a Gift Shop disappearing completely inside. I called the owner of the shop the next day to offer any help as a witness along with my pictures. She informed me that if the car had travelled one more foot, it would have hit the helium tanks. I envisioned small missles shooting out of the building or fireworks inside! 8^o I had thought that the driver ran away after this, but he actually waited in the car inside the store until the fire trucks and police arrived. The owner of the shop had her store fixed within a week's time. WOW that dumb driver was lucky, and this was almost unbelievable but since I saw it with my own two eyes.........

my $0.02 >

And it's also costing me money each day that pasture is sitting empty and unusable. That means I can't put animals there to graze and ending up having to feed them hay. And hays not cheap these days.

Randy

Reply to
dave AKA vwdoc1

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