This BMW enthusiast facetimed OP, crying because he knew he wasn’t getting his car back.
Washington resident and Redditor /u/jamerlpoo submitted dashcam footage from a witness showing the sad moment an uninsured driver in Vancouver, WA ran a red light and gets T-boned by a car with the right of way.
Check out the dashcam footage for yourself below.
[oc] some guy with no insurance hit my cousins car 🙁
byu/jamerlpoo inIdiotsInCars
The accident happened at the intersection of Lewisville Highway and NE 4th Plain Blvd. (Exact location on Google Maps linked here.)
“My cousin was on his way home from school when this idiot decided to run the red light,” OP’s caption starts.
In the dashcam video, we see the witness driving up to the intersection with a green light.
We can see traffic, also with a green, going the other way.
The witness has to stop because there’s(what we later learn) an uninsured driver rolling through in his white pickup.
“…it looks like before crossing the street he was having an altercation with a pedestrian and I guess he decided to just drive across the street on red light!?”
If you look closely at the video, we can see where said pedestrian is. It looks a lot like the angry pedestrian smashed off the side view mirror of the pickup truck.
Then, the uninsured driver tries to thread the needle through traffic with the right of way, but it goes horribly wrong.
OP’s cousin T-Bones this uninsured driver’s pick-up in the middle of its bed, and it’s gameover for his BMW, it’s absolutely totaled.
“My cousin facetimed crying because he knew he wasn’t going to get his car back. He had fabricated a front bumper and did all the body and paint work on his car.”
“It’s just really depressing that all his hard work was just taken away from him just because some idiot decided to be an idiot and ruin my cousin’s day.”
It’s an understatement, but you never know what’s going to happen to you on the road.
There really isn’t much, if anything, in the drivers’ handbook that says what to do if some wack-o attacks your car.
To play devil’s advocate, and given what we know now, it looks like the driver in the pickup made the rash decision to get away from the angry pedestrian as quickly as possible and chose to run a red light.
The right thing to do was probably not engage the angry pedestrian to begin with and, after the fact, to get away as safely as possible, which probably would’ve been making a quick left instead.
Driving without insurance, however, is a big no-no.
You don’t need a handbook to tell you that.
Driving without insurance is wrong because it jeopardizes the well-being and financial security of others on the road by neglecting the responsibility to cover potential damages and liabilities in the event of an accident (the unknown.)
Accidents happen, and that’s why there’s insurance.
In Washington, if you get hit by an uninsured driver, it’s up to you to make yourself whole.
The best you can do is file a claim for damages to the State Department of Licensing and, if the other party doesn’t pay, they get their license suspended.
Then, you have to go through the courts’ system if you want any money, in other words, a major PITA.
”Damn, that’s infuriating. I hope the non-insured idiot got plenty of tickets and a future suspended license,” /u/citznfish commented.
“That sucks. This is why you carry uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage,” /u/KingArthurHS recommended.
It’s unpredictable out there, even if you drive defensively.
That’s why things like making sure your insurance is in order and making the cheap investment of getting a dashcam is of utmost importance in this increasingly crazy driving world we’re in.
