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Don't bother me I'm eating my Yogurt!
Mon Feb 06, 2006
I wanted to share this little tale that I had to endure
today. While sitting at a stoplight located at Grand Traverse and Hemphill
(Southbound on GT) I was struck by a red Sunfire. Broadsided is a better word.
The driver apparently was going too fast, spun a 180 and slid sideways into my
truck. As I jumped out of my truck, the witness on the scene said that she was a
police officer and that she would call 911. After about 3 minutes making sure I
was ok, and checking on the other driver, she hopped back in her truck, saying
she had to pick up her daughter and good luck to both of us. I have no idea if
she really was a cop or not, but I really appreciate her sticking around to be a
witness to the accident. I wrote down her license plate as she sped off. 10
minutes after the accident I called 911 to make sure that she had actually
called. They confirmed that the call had been placed and an office had been
dispatched. A few minutes later a Burton City officer arrived. After checking on
me and the other driver he explained that we were in the city of Flint, not
Burton and he had to be moving on. He spread out some flares and drove off. One
half hour after the accident, I called 911 a second time, inquiring about when
an officer would arrive. Shortly, I was assured. Forty-five minutes after the
accident I called the Flint City police directly. I was assured (after 5 minutes
on hold) that an officer was on the way. After hanging up I called 911 again,
where I was transferred and during the transfer my cell phone mysteriously
powered off. The call did not drop, we did not become disconnected, the phone
actually powered off. I called back and was told “not to hang up while I was
transferred”. Again, during the transfer, my Nextel actually powered off. I am
used to Nextel calls dropping for no apparent reason, but I have never seen my
phone just turn off.
I gave up and called my insurance agent. I filed the claim
and explained about the police. It was now an hour and 20 minutes after the
accident. No police, except for the two that had come and gone. It’s 20 degrees
outside and at this point I am freezing. Traffic is all around us and some are
sliding on the ice. People are still driving by asking if we need anything. I
encourage all passersby to call 911 on our behalf. I am afraid I am going to get
hit again as the flares the Burton officer had spread out had long since burned
out.
Finally, I had enough. I called my insurance agent back and
explained that the police still had not arrived and that I was going to leave
the scene. He had me get all the other driver’s information so I wrote down
everything. My agent said I should go to the station later and file the report.
I left the scene of the accident one and a half hours after the accident with no
City of Flint officer arriving.
After leaving work early, (no easy feat considering I was
almost 2 hours late) I went to the downtown police office to file a report. As I
started to explain to the officer on duty at the traffic desk what happened, she
interrupted and said, “Why didn’t you call it in?” I replied, “I did, 4 times,
you guys never showed up.” She listened to my story with bored disinterest. I
explained that the woman that hit me was driving a rental car, gave the officer
the woman’s drivers license number, her phone number and address, the rental car
license plate, and the phone number for the rental car company. She informed me
that she could not file a complaint with out the other involved party. She said,
all while digging deeply into her yogurt container that she would see if she
could contact the other party and file a complaint for me. I asked her if she
needed to see my truck and she said she would meet me outside in a minute to
look at it. I think she needed to finish her yogurt.
I would like to openly thank the Flint Police for their
commitment to the community and prompt response time. I would like to thank the
Genesee County 911 system for its ability to actually turn off Nextel Phones.
I’d like to thank Burton police for being so brotherly and helping out when no
Flint Police were to be found. Finally, I’d like to thank the mysterious witness
and her commitment to her daughter, who disappeared after stopping for a moment,
leaving me to freeze stranded out in an intersection for an hour and a half.
Jeremy S. Anderson
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