Watch OUT for my Mini!

A few weeks ago some prat pulled out in front of me when I was zooming along a city street at a fair clip (probably about 50 kph), and I smashed straight into him, in his 4WD.  I got a massive shock, the mini got a horrible dent, and now our insurance company will have an enormous bill. Luckily the other driver admitted it was all his fault, but since there were literally at least a hundred witnesses he didn’t have much choice.  He even told me that when he pulled out, his view was blocked by a van.  But still, he pulled out anyway…Grrr.  As I sat behind the wheel reeling with shock, my immediate thought was that it was just going to be a major hassle, dealing with the insurance, repairs, and although I didn’t know it at the time, my incredibly sore back.

A couple of hours later, after getting home and confessing all to Andrew (I did a really good job of giving him a fright – walked in crying and finally choaked out “I had an accident…but it wasn’t my fault!) my neck and back starting hurting and I eventually spent the next two days off work feeling all stiff and sore.

The great Accident Compensation system of New Zealand paid for physio, which I trotted off to twice a week for a couple of weeks, until I felt like I was back to my pre-crash state of health, and ‘fessed up to the physio that I was cured.  But funnily enough, the physio decided to keep treating me anyway.  (My pre-crash back was sore in all kinds of ways, a physio can make me yelp in pain my pressing any one of about 20 places on my back.)  Because my physio makes that decision, and my physio gets paid for all the treatments, there is really no incentive to stop treating me.

I know, the ACC system is broken and we’re all paying for it.  I went back to work and told my colleagues and they all promptly moaned about how THEIR taxes were paying for me to have a non-accident related back problem fixed, but I’ve overcome my guilt already.   One day, hopefully when the government has finished dealing with scarily high number of sickness beneficiaries who are too ill to work but perfectly well enough to commit crimes at every opportunity, the government will figure out a better way of funding this type of treatment.

Today I was driving along the motorway at 100kph when a woman in a 4WD decided to change lanes without actually checking if there was anyone already there.  There was – ME – and it was only by braking really fast that I avoided another collision.

So I’m just saying, all you crazy drivers out there, watch out for the MINI.  I do not want to crash into another one of you.