"Dad, I hit a light pole." That was the whole first sentence, at 8:02 p.m. on Wednesday, July 1. The second sentence was "I'm okay, nobody's hurt, the pole's fine." He'd clearly rehearsed it in the car before he called, and I'll give him credit for putting the good news right up front.
He was in a store lot off the Belt Highway, picking up a few things on his night off from the grocery store. He backed out of a space, turned the wheel a little too early, and the back corner of the Civic met one of those light poles sitting on a concrete base. Low speed. Loud noise.
I drove over in the Silverado. The pole and its concrete base were completely fine, as concrete bases usually are. A manager came out, looked, shrugged and went back inside. The Civic had a dent and a long scrape across the right rear corner of the bumper cover, paint gone down to the plastic, and the corner pushed in about an inch. The trunk opened and closed fine. Lights all worked. Nothing underneath was hanging.
Garrett was rattled but steady. I asked him to tell me what happened before I said anything else, and his version matched what the bumper said: backing out, cutting the wheel before the rear of the car was clear of the pole, which was just behind him and off to his right. He'd checked his mirror. He just hadn't checked it again once he started turning.
Why we didn't file a claim
The short answer is that there was nothing to claim on.
When we added the Civic to our policy in December, we covered it for liability and comprehensive plus roadside, but no collision. On a $6,400 car with 142,000 miles, collision coverage didn't make sense to us for the money. Collision is the part of a policy that pays to fix your own car when you hit something. So hitting a light pole with no collision coverage means the repair is on us, full stop.
Even if we'd had collision with a $500 deductible, I'd have thought hard about it. A small at-fault claim on a new 16-year-old driver could cost more in future premiums than the repair. Our agent has told us more than once that the cheapest claim is the one you don't file. I don't know how every insurer handles that, so I won't pretend to. I just know our premium already went from $1,240 to $2,380 when he got licensed, and I'd like it to stay where it is now.
Liability would only have come into it if the pole or the store had been damaged. It wasn't.
We got two quotes from body shops. The first was higher than I wanted, with a new bumper cover, paint and blend into the quarter panel. The second shop said the cover could be pulled back into shape, the scrape filled and repainted, and blended. Their number was $640 and they had it done in three days.
I thought about doing it myself with a can of touch-up paint. Then I thought about how it would look, and how long Garrett would have to drive around with my touch-up job. We paid the $640.
Garrett's half
We'd agreed before he got the car that he'd share in things that were his doing, so this one was a 50-50 split. His half is $320. He's been working closing shifts at the grocery store since June, so he's paying it back at $50 a week out of his paycheck. Six and a half weeks. I put a little table at the bottom of the shared family spreadsheet with a running balance. He asked if he could pay it faster. I told him $50 is fine, the point isn't to make it hurt, the point is that it's his.
He also asked if this counted against him on the driving-score app on his phone. Probably not, since it was at about 4 miles per hour. It does count against him in the family notebook.
What we practiced afterward
The Saturday after, we went to the church lot, the same one where he learned to park, and I put a trash can where the light pole would be. Back out, straight, until the front of your car is past the car beside you. Mirror again. Then turn. He did it twenty times. Boring, which is the point.
The scrape is fixed and you can't see it. The rule about checking twice is new, and I'd rather it cost us $640 in a parking lot than learn it any other way.