It's a Driver's World, Redux

It's a weird thing that the interweb has made printed writing, which used to seem the most permanent of all things, seem impermanent and inaccessible. 

I was looking through the archived copies of a Twin Cities neighborhood newspaper today. The Park Bugle's issues from some point before the 2000s are scans of printed copies. They're PDFs, but they're not OCRed or searchable. You just have to look at them, so that's what I was doing as I looked for some historical information on a particular topic.

While I was doing that, I came across the Bugle's July 1996 issue, which contained this article by a writer named Dave Healy on page 5:

This article deserves to live on more than it currently is in a dead, unfindable photographic image of a printed page!

So here is Dave Healy's article, OCRed and corrected by me

It's a driver's world

By Dave Healy

I work at the University of Minnesota, where despite shrinking legislative support and annual downsizing, the construction of new parking lots and ramps continues unabated. 

I live in St. Anthony Park, where sidewalks are still used, but when I venture out to the suburbs I enter a world where it's generally assumed that pedestrians don't exist. If you build it, they will come—provided you build a road to drive there on. 

I also live in Minnesota, where "transportation funding" is interpreted to mean "automobile funding" and where water cooler discussion these days is as likely t0 focus on speed limits as on the weather, new stadiums or who killed whom. 

It's a driver's world. I suppose I've always known that, but recent events have dramatized the truth in new and troubling ways. 

Several weeks ago I was on my way to work, which in winter months means catching a bus. I was crossing the street at a conrolled intersection: Raymond Avenue and Energy Park Drive. The light was green; I was in the crosswalk. At 8 a.m. it was light out The pavement was dry. 

Halfway across the street, I was struck by a car making a left turn. The vehicle came from behind me and to my right. I never saw it. I was knocked to the pavement and suffered bruises to my arms, leg, and back.

The driver of the bus I was trying to catch saw the accident and called 911. An ambulance arrived shortly, followed by a police officer. After giving my description of the accident. I was hauled off to the hospital, where x-rays proved negative and I was released. 

One might say that I was lucky—if it makes any sense to describe someone who got hit by a car as lucky. I emerged with no broken bones and no permanent injuries. I was quite sore for a couple of weeks, but I only had to miss two days of work, and now I'm fully recovered. It could have been worse. 

Still, I did incur some medical expenses: ambulance, emergency room, x-rays. I assumed those expenses would be covered by my medical insurance and was told to get a copy of the accident report. 

An accident report, I discovered, is coded with numbers, letters, symbols. With the report itself comes a key that explains the code. I studied both documents carefully but was unable to determine what kind of citation had been issued to the driver. Confused, I called the traffic and accident division. 

"It would be in that box in the lower right corner," I was told. "What does it say there?"

What appeared in the box was the officer's diagram of the accident along with a short narrative, which I read to the person on the phone: "Pedestrian states he was walking eastbound attempting to cross Raymond Avenue and was trying to catch a bus. Driver states he was northbound on Raymond after making a left turn off Energy Park Drive, going approximately 25 mph. Driver states pedestrian walked fast into left side of his vehicle."

I paused, waiting for the sympathetic chuckle indicating that my auditor recognized the ludicrousness of this description. No chuckle was forthcoming. 

"There's no indication here that the driver was ticketed," I said. 

"Well, that box is where a citation would be I listed if there were one."

"Wait a minute. I was struck by a car in broad daylight while in the crosswalk with a green light, and you're telling me the driver didn't get a ticker? What's my health insur­ance company going to think of that?" 

"Oh, you don't want to submit this to your health insurance. They'll just kick it back."

"Not if it's obvious that the driver was at fault." 

"No, no, Mr. Healy. You're wrong on two counts. First, medical expenses fall under Minnesota's no-fault insurance law. It doesn't matter whose fault the accident was; your insurance company is liable for your medical expenses. Second, this doesn't go to your healrh insurance; it goes to your auto insurance." 

"But I wasn't driving. I was on foot." 

"Yes, I know. But as long as you have auto insurance, that's who pays." 

"But what if I didn't have auto insurance?" 

"Well, most people do."

"But the driver still should have been given a ticket."

"As I already explained, it doesn't matter whether he was ticketed or not." 

A couple of weeks after this incident, my teenage son was driving home from school when someone pulled out in front of him. Ben couldn't stop, and a collision ensued. No one was hurt, but both vehicles were damaged. Our van sustained a dent to the bumper and right front fender as well as a broken turn signal. 

Witnesses confirmed Ben's account of the accident. The other driver, who had stopped for a red light, pulled into the intersection while the light was still red. Ben had a green light. The other driver got two tickets—one for the moving violation and one for not having insurance information in his car. 

When I called to report the accident to our auto insurance company I asked if it was subject to no-fault laws. 

"No. There were no injuries, and no-fault applies only to medical expenses." 

I asked if this insurance claim would have any effect on our next premium.  

"It shouldn't. As long as the other driver was ticketed and witnesses confirm that it was his fault, we should be able recover costs from his insurance company and your rates won't be affected." 

What did I learn from these two events? I learned that if someone damages your car, it matters whose fault it was, but if someone damages you, it doesn't. 

I learned that when you're crossing a street, for all practical purposes you're a driver even if you're on foot. 

I learned that if you hit another vehicle, you can get a ticket for not carrying insurance information, but you can run a pedestrian over in a crowded walk in broad daylight and walk away with nothing on your record. You don't even have to report the accident to your insurance company. 

I learned that it's a driver's world.