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Uninsured driver causes new wounds, opens old scars

By MICHELLE MILLER
Published March 20, 2006

We have been unsuccessful in our attempt to collect both your deductible and the amount we paid for your loss from the party responsible for the above accident.

The letter from the insurance company came a few weeks ago, but I'd known since the day of the crash in November that "Mr. Responsible Party," the one driving the 1989 red Ford pickup with no insurance, no license and no tag, wasn't going to make good.

Sure, the guy had stood there in the glare of a Florida Highway Patrol trooper's headlights, holding his citations and apologizing earnest-as-all-get-out for pulling out in front of me and my kids in a reckless manner.

He was going to pay for the damage, he told us as his 23-year-old son looked on. "I take care of my responsibilities."

The kid's eyes said otherwise.

His father might as well have been telling me outright to forget about ever seeing the deductible for the $4,000 to fix the front end of my car. And the rental car and medical bills for that swollen hand that would be in a cast for five weeks? Ha!

It stinks when you collide with a ne'er-do-well.

But as with most unfortunate events, there's a lesson.

Now I know I should buck up and pay the extra for uninsured motorist coverage. Evidently, there's a bunch of them out there messing up other people's lives.

And you really can learn a lot about complete strangers and maybe even yourself when you're inhaling car exhaust and waiting for the Florida Highway Patrol to show up.

Turns out it was a busy night for the FHP.

For nearly four hours, we waited and watched as the dysfunction of a threadbare family played out under the street lights in a strip mall parking lot.

While I was counting blessings that my kids weren't hurt in the collision, Mr. Responsible Party was stomping around all Marlon Brando-like, cursing the sky and asking, "Why me? Why the+

&^% me?!"

Hello!

The ex-wife showed up to holler about the past and the $18,000 in child support the louse still owed her. The current spouses/significant others were calling on cell phones and hanging up. As for the son, well, he spent a lot of time pacing between his parents and saying stuff like, "Here we go again with the dramatics!"

This was a crash of another kind, one you just can't look away from.

You might be surprised, I told my wide-eyed kids, "but this kind of stuff happens in a lot of families."

I know this to be true, partly because there is no end to those willing to appear on Jerry Springer, and because I work in a newsroom where a police scanner provides more than background noise.

I know it mostly, though, because a police officer told me so the night my mother downed a handful of whatever was in the medicine cabinet during the height of a heated argument between my parents.

I was about 16 then, trying hard to blend into the woodwork when the officer noticed me.

His words were a kind gesture for a kid who knew well the lonely walk to school, when you're trying to shake the knot in your stomach and the visions from last night's family horror show.

You wonder what it would be like to live in someone else's house, maybe that of the kid walking with you whom you don't dare tell even though you're best friends. You swear it won't be like this when you get out.

Over the years, you work hard to remember the good, to forgive, to make peace and purge the dysfunction you know can span generations because all your life you heard your parents' own childhood sagas.

It's an ongoing exorcism, one you think you might be doing okay with years later, when you see the wide-eyed innocence in your own kids' eyes as another family's horror show plays out under the streetlights in a strip mall parking lot.

--Michele Miller can be reached in west Pasco at 869-6251, or toll free at 1-800-333-7505, ext 6251. Her e-mail address is miller@sptimes.com

[Last modified March 20, 2006, 00:36:17]