I realize that this blog is my place to ramble on about music, independent music, and musical stuff…

However, since it is also a place for my voice, I feel the need to ramble on a bit about an important life event of May, 2006.

In the simplest terms, in the late morning of May 1, 2006 in the intersection of Lynn Road and North Hills Drive in Raleigh, NC, a man ran a red light (by at least 4 seconds) and t-boned my wife’s new New Beetle Volkswagen. The accident badly injured my wife’s whole left side, including a huge knot in her left elbow. The man responsible then proceeded to lie about the accident and shifted the blame to my wife. Not surprisingly (in today’s society), NONE of the half-dozen or so people present at the time of the accident stopped and offered to help or to speak to the police. Everyone must have had somewhere very important to go (much more important than a woman trapped in her car from an accident from a bad guy who also tried to intimidate his victim, and who has consistently lied through his teeth about the incident). I’d like to say something sarcastic at this point about all those “helpful” witnesses, but I will refrain.

The only witness that could be identified by her license tag, who also said to my wife “You had the green light!” immediately after the wreck, took five weeks to respond to the police, and has changed her story completely. She now says she didn’t witness the accident, and now has a different version of what she said to my wife (although she did say that she talked to my wife while my wife was still trapped in her bug).

The bottom line is: a man who ran a light that had long gone red, a man that has no integrity, who nearly caused my wife’s death, who has a serious police record, who tried to intimidate my wife, who has lied about the accident in every way, who has cost us many thousands of dollars, who has caused my wife pain from which she is still recovering, who has cost us weeks of sorrow, suffering, who has cost us weeks of time in efforts to exonerate my wife, who has cost us a brand new bug (my wife’s favorite-ever car), who has cost us many thousands of dollars – is the one that the insurance companies are believing.

And now that our insurance company is having to foot the bill, there is no compensation for the suffering my wife has endured. Our $22K brand new Beetle will be worth $4K-$5K after it is repaired (if not less) – and we will receive no compensation for the massive loss of value in the car, and we will then own a vehicle that doesn’t have the safety and integrity it did before the accident. (Would you put your loved one in a car that was hit at 35+ MPH directly in one side, caving in every safety structure in the left side and causing the entire floor of the car’s unibody to completely buckle and warp?)

The moral of the story? Well, I guess it is “Bad things sometimes happen to good people.” By extrapolation, it means that someone can commit a traffic violation, hurt someone, cost them dearly (in many different ways) – and all they have to do is lie about their mistake – and the offender be cleared and will inflict further harm on their victim.

Thanks for letting me ramble. Sorry about the sour grapes. Back to music…