Monday, June 22, 2009

You don't need no stinking report

So I was on the job last weekend driving the taxi. It had been a nice, albeit long day. The last train pulled in at 2:30, I got two fares from it, both a couple miles away. Ok, so it won't be a quick finish, but I should still be done by 3:00 then home by 3:30. I drop off the last fare, turn to head back to the station where I will hopefully get the word to fill up, I go to turn left onto the main road back to the station when...

SHEAR!

A young woman blows through the red light facing her and takes off the front of the cab. It was a rather amazing accident. Oddly, I didn't even feel the hit. It was so neatly done that the car wasn't jostled into another position at all. The detritus covered about a 100 yard radius. The front part of the cab had nearly been shorn off; save for a few dangling pieces, it was a clean break. Bumper, headlights, grill, all neatly shaved off right to where the hood started. Three more feet into the intersection and it would have been the driver's side door she hit.

Then it got strange. The police were called. The young woman said her father worked as a captain in the police department. About four minutes later, her father did pull up to the accident scene, shortly followed by a squad car. The police took my information and my side of the story. I went to ask the woman for her information and exchange mine, but she wouldn't talk to me. She said I would have to go through her father. Her father would only mention how old the cab looked and wouldn't give me any information. He would keep going off to talk to the two officers by himself. Every time I would sidle up close to see what was going on, one of the officers would say that everything was all right and I could sit down and relax. When the father was not talking to the officers, he was telling his daughter to be quiet and sit in his car.

Eventually, I was given a slip of paper with both of our information on it and told that this was all I needed. The tow truck for the cab came, I went back to the station and got home about 4:40am, then had to be at work eight hours later.

Cut to today. I went downtown to get a copy of the police report. Everyone I know said it was very strange to have this father do most of the talking since he wasn't even there for the accident. I should make sure that this report didn't say something completely opposite of what happened. I agreed and went to see what the report did say. I get to the records office, give the details of the date, time and report number and was told the the report was a "Code 4", meaning that no official report of the accident was to be filed. Hmmmm. This smells to me like a cover up. Most likely the girl was drinking or realized she was at fault for the accident, and her father did not want negative consequences for her, so he made sure that nothing would be filed that could be harmful to his daughter.

I still haven't heard anything from the cab company about it, I would like to talk to the boss so I can find out if there's anything information I'm unaware of, but none of my phone calls are returned (not a huge surprise). For the moment, it looks as if the matter is closed, at least there's no report that claims something negative about me, and I drove this past weekend, so the company can't be too mad. If anything else develops from this, I'll update.

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