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vent: not a proud momma tonight
My son screwed up the front end of his car today.
While yapping on his cell phone and driving (which he knows is a big no-no) he hits a curb. He pops both tires on the drivers side but that is not the worse he messed up the front wheel axle and struts and I forgot what else. Yea he admits he was going a bit fast at the time too.
We had to call the tow truck which took 2 1/2 hours. I went out there to wait with him since this happened in a not too good neighborhood. Well once it started getting dark DH came out to finish waiting for us. Of course when DH saw all the damage it wasn't a pleasant wait.
The guy at the repair shop was shocked at the damage. He is going to call with the estimate in the morning. DH says we are looking at a couple of thousand. I hope he is exaggerating since he is so pissed about it. The repair shop guy told me he would try to be nice with his estimate.
Needless to say DS is grounded and not happy about that. After all it is his Christmas break! It is going to be a long holiday.
Re: vent: not a proud momma tonight
Oh no!
I am glad he is ok.
Do you have insurance - collison coverage should cover the accident and then you would only have to pay the deductible.
Sending you good vibes.
I'm so sorry! Thank goodness no one was hurt. Hopefully your DS learned a lesson with all of this.
And the upside is that if this is the worst thing that ever happens to him, you should be a VERY proud momma.
my read shelf:
Sorry to hear about his accident--just be glad it wasn't worse! Every teenager has that first accident, too... and hopefully he'll learn a lesson and won't talk on his cellphone in the car anymore.
Wow, he has a lot of nerve. He should be grateful you aren't sending his butt out there to make a couple of grand over break.
So sorry for the bummer news.
Uhh, yeah. I got grounded for talking back to my mom. I can only imagine if I'd wrecked our old beater. He can suck it up and deal. You're being a good, responsible mom, and I commend you for it. If he gripes too much, you could always tell him to get reacquainted with his bike!
I'm glad your son is OK, and I hope he learns from it. I know my older brother had a similar type crash as a teenager, but in almost 14 years, the only other crash he's been in wasn't his fault. For me, it was a speeding ticket instead of a crash.
I think it's a rite of passage for most kids to screw up on driving. ?Sometimes we're lucky and there's not much damage to speak of, or we're really lucky and nothing happened from our stupidity. ?And sometimes you pay big time. ?I'm sure we can all think of stupid driving things we did when we were teens and how cautious we probably were after the scare. ?He'll get over it, and at least he's safe. ?I bet it scared the bejeesus out of him, and he'll be incredibly cautious from now on, at least for the near future.
I'm sorry Meganne, glad he's okay and hope you can get things taken care of without too much work.
Your son is doing much better than me. I was a hot mess of a driver when I was younger. I was pulled over probably 10 times in 3 years, although I got tickets only a fraction of those times (twice in the month I graduated HS). I finally rear ended a car into another (low speed, no one was hurt) the month before I left for college. I didn't drive for another year - first I was scared, then I moved to the dorms w/o a car, then they finally totalled up the points on my license and took it away. I got real friendly with my bike.
Probably my biggest lesson was the hassle and cost of getting my license back, although it took me a bit longer to really slow down and I could always be more careful. I was a really straight-laced kid, but everyone does something stupid.
$2,397 is the estimate I just got.
I didn't call insurance as to not raise his already high rates of $3,600 per year since it was only his car involved. At first I just thought it would be two tires. But after hearing about the rest of the damage I started thinking about whether to call insurance last night.
I am still thinking because I am wondering about the darn rates. I'm sure they'll get that money back from me within a year or two! It is his first claim and he has not had any other accidents or tickets. I guess I'll have another cup of coffee and mull this over.
Does he have a PT job? Can he get one to pay the increase in the insurance premiums? I know that if we had wrecked our car in HS (I shared with my bro), we would have paid for repairs and insurance increase, or it would've been ankle highway for us. Honestly, that might be the lasting lesson that he needs. If he's being hit in the pocketbook every month for his accident, then he'll probably be a safer driver because of it.
Good luck with everything. And if you start to get angry, just try to remind yourself that he's OK and that's the most important thing.
My parents always had the rule that if insurance increased b/c of my error, I would pay the difference.
If he's heading off to college in the fall, an increase might not be as bad if it is going to be temporary for the last few months he's living at home. ?I think most insurance plans allow you to switch to a nominal fee for children living a certain distance from home. ?My parents went from 2 or 3 thousand for me to $50.?
No DS doesn't have a job. He did look for one for the Christmas holidays but as y'all know stores were just not hiring like they did. He's going to have to make a big effort here to find one asap.
As for college & reducing the insurance I have been happily thinking about that. But he is leaning toward going to Tulane which is here in the city so something tells me I won't be getting the insurance break I had hoped for sending him away.
I am trying to get in touch with his father who knows what happened. If I can get him to pay half I will skip the insurance. But the man is not answering his phone! I need to do something quick because I authorized the repair shop to start work on it about an hour ago and was surprisingly told it would be ready by the end of the day. If I am going to get insurance involved I bet they want to see it first.
I don't know what the Tulane neighborhood or transport is like in New Orleans, but are you planning on him having a car at college? It might not be bad for him to be carless for the first year. Although you might not be able to get as much of a discount on the insurance as if he went far away, but you might be able to get him listed as an occasional driver if he doesn't have the car with him and drive everday.
oh that sucks!
hopefully your son has learned his lesson - NO MORE TALKING AND DRIVING!!
Be happy it was just the curb he hit and nothing something else.
I'm not clear - is he the only driver of this car? If so, I'd have it sit until he comes up with the money to repair it.
I'd also take the car away for a number of reasons - talking on the cell phone while driving, speeding, and the damage. Any one of those would have been enough for my parents to have taken the car away from me as a teen.
Not forever, but for a time. We had an agreement to that effect. Something like first offense, lose the car for a week. Second, a month. Third, forever. And these were minor things, not like a huge damage causing accident. I would definitely take it away until he pays it off. He can shovel snow, walk dogs, babysit.
I'd also stop paying his insurance. He doesn't need a car in college. He can live without it.
Maybe all of that will make him think more.
That sucks! but at least no one was hurt! Like pps hav mentioned, a teen's first accident is like a rite of passage. My first one led to my first job - the rule was I pay for gas and any tickets or damage.
Anything you can achieve through hard work, you could also just buy.
Ditto this. I lived on campus my first two years of college and my parents didn't let me have a car. I know a lot of colleges in my area forbid freshmen from having cars unless they had a medical condition where they needed one to get to doctor appointments.