badbrad

The unimaginable happened to me yesterday on I-20 here in Columbia South Carolina. I was driving on a 2 lane stretch with a concrete barrier to my left (fast lane) and a 16 wheeler on my right when in the distance ahead of me, about 3/4 of a mile, a ladder fell off one of those repair trucks and hit the road. Traffic was pretty heavy, in both lanes, and the ladder started to disintegrate immediately! Cars and trucks started swerving and running over pieces of the ladder and it was a very frightening situation given the speed and the the fact that there was the barrier and an uneven median on the right side of the road. I saw the pieces coming towards me and tried to avoid them but the SUV in front of me hit a big chunk and it bounced up and while I tried to avoid it, I did not want to hit either the wall to my left or the truck to my right, so a piece of the ladder hit my front bumper on my SRT-8 in the center and then bounced and hit the right side of the car, along the panel over the tire, the door and the panel over the rear tire. There was no where to stop and apparently the ladder was causing much havoc all over the place.

Eventually I stopped and got out and looked at the damage. There is a big ding on the front bumper (a gash) and there are some scratches on the panels mentioned above. There is a chip in the sports stripe down the middle. The car is the black/grey sparkle color 2009 edition. There are no visible dents that I can see. The tires and rims on the right side appear to be ok. The special lower bumper appears ok standing up but I haven't looked underneath it to see.

I called my insurance company on the U-Connect phone from the car. The car runs fine. Since I have $ 1,000,000 in comprehensive they told me they would cover it all for $ 100 deductible and I could take the car to any body shop I wanted and would fully pay for the repairs and a rental car.

I am going to take it in for its first oil change tomorrow to the dealership and their body shop (Dodge) is going to look at it and tell my what they think should be done. My insurance company has its own approved body shops that has their own appraisers built in but if I want to use the Dealership instead, they will send a appraiser to my home or office at my convenience who will write up the damage appraisal and send me the cash estimation directly to my checking account. If the dealership finds any underbody damage, they can fax the overage to the insurance company and they will adjust the difference and send me the additional funds to my checking account.

So I'll find out more tomorrow when I take the car in.

I wish someone got the tag number off that darn truck but it was too far ahead and I'm just lucky that the ladder didn't come through the windshield and I wasn't killed.