The Marcottes

I got a call at work yesterday. It was Patti. She was crying and Stella was screaming in the background. As she was turning into our driveway, a car tried to pass her on the right and slammed into the Pilot. The point of impact was Stella’s door. No one ended up being hurt, but it scared everyone involved. I went home to help.

The driver of the other car was a thirty-ish Hispanic woman who stopped and showed concern for the kids. She also provided her license number and a cell phone, but she said she was driving her mother’s car and needed to get the insurance information from home. She left.

Two hours later she had still not returned, so Patti called our insurance company to get the ball rolling. While Patti was talking to them, the woman returned. She actually had no insurance at all and was desperately attempting to get added to her mother’s insurance that afternoon.

She seemed nice enough and she was trying to take responsibility, so I gave her some unsolicited advice: “Don’t drag your mother into this. If you get added to her insurance, then file a claim 10 minutes later, they will investigate. They’ll figure out what happened and deny your claim, then they’ll cancel your mom’s policy, too, and if you’re lucky, they won’t file insurance-fraud charges.”

She seemed to understand that was the right thing to do. Our insurance was more than helpful and informed us that our rates would not go up, we’d get a free rental and we wouldn’t have to pay a deductible.