One of the reasons I'm broke...

Road Rage Puts Woman, 4 Children In Danger

So...I now have a car. It's a 1997 Toyota Avalon with just shy of 200,000 miles on it. Obviously, not a long-term ride, but it should do for tooling around town for the next 3 years or so. As an aside, it's not like I just got it or anything; I've had it since early December.

The day after it was delivered, the woman who lives across the street blithely neglected to check behind her and backed her Nissan XTerra into it, smashing the left-front headlight and crumpling the area right around the bumper. Yup. I hadn't even taken it out on the road. It was just barely registered and insured. And, since she was driving a god-damned tank, the damage to her vehicle amounted to bupkiss.

Fast forward to now, skipping past a few police visits and some screaming and a bit of worrying about ninjas (don't ask) and a settlement which dumped, temporarily, over $1,300 into my bank account and my dropping my car off to have it repaired. I am now driving a Chevy Aveo which is, provided you have freshly charged batteries in it and your remote control set to the proper frequency, a damn fine little car. Emphasis on little.

Now, my neighbor's insurance company is, of course, paying for the rental on my remote-controlled Matchbox. Well, most of it: they're not paying for the gas (which is fine since, well, you know, I'd have to pay for gas in my own car were I driving it) or, ironically, the additional insurance needed to endow it with complete coverage. My own vehicle is insured right up to the minimum necessary in Florida to legally drive it, so I'm reasonably sure that my own insurance company wouldn't want to hear about it should I actually have an accident in a rental car being paid for by the opposition. The cost of insuring this mite of a vehicle for nine days is over $160. I.e. what I would pay to insure my much nicer (if, admittedly, much older) car for over two months.

Since I am in the process of moving out of my brother's house and into my own apartment, my money is so tight from the constrictions of move-in fees and required rental insurance and security deposits that its poor little monetary feet and fingers are swelling and turning purple. I honestly intended to cancel the insurance after the first day, thereby saving the money and relying on my own caution and legendary "feather-foot" to see me through the remaining rental period. The more I thought about it, however, the more I realized that, as evinced by the story above and more than a few others like it, Jacksonville's roads seem to celebrate "Put a Partially-Sighted Psychotic Behind the Wheel of a Dangerous Vehicle" as a perpetual holiday. So, although it is causing me much financial stress, I have been quite relaxed and comfortable behind the wheel, knowing that the safety of this loaner is guaranteed, exorbitantly, by much wiser entities than I.

Here's the funny thing, though: when I first made the decision to stick with the insurance, I patted myself on the back with such vivacity that I nearly sprained my shoulder. "Way to go, man!" I said to myself. "Way to be responsible! You've done the right thing, ol' self, ol' chum!" Now, at eight days without an accident and the promise of Ramen noodles and multi-vitamins as my only sustenance for the foreseeable future, I'm hearing an entirely different tune: "Y'know," says this oily voice in my left ear. "This car's got some pick up, dude. And airbags. And, after all, you are covered.... I mean, seriously," here I feel the little prick of claws, or possibly a pitchfork, in my left shoulder, "isn't it your turn to drive like a maniac?"