P.A.D.D.

I have never been one to have bumper stickers on my vehicles. I sometimes enjoy them on other cars but never really felt the need to express myself on my bumper. The majority of the bumper stickers I see are rather lackluster and unoriginal. It seems to me that bumper stickers have lost their appeal and that there are very few good ones about anymore. I do have a few favorites and a couple of them are below:

The more people I meet the more I like my dog

People who think they know it all really annoy those of us who do

What Would Scooby Doo?

I did make my own bumper sticker once but I never put it on my car, although I did hang it up at work for a very short time. It read:

P.A.D.D.
People Against Dead Drivers

Many years ago, my wife and I lived in Anchorage, Alaska. We lived in an apartment complex on the corner of a busy road and a fairly quiet cross street. We parked our cars at an angle on the cross street at the side of our apartment. The City of Anchorage had a lot across the side street that was a parking area for snow plows and other heavy equipment. There was a garage on the back of the property for maintenance work. The front of the lot was all gravel and was usually empty in the summer. There was a 6 foot chain link fence around the property and a gate across the entry way. The gate was always closed and locked. One summer night after midnight I awoke to some loud noises. I didn’t recognize the sounds. I then heard a car racing up the side street towards our complex. I heard some crashes and an engine roaring. I jumped out of bed and ran to the kitchen window. Bright headlights were shining directly into the apartment from the city lot across our side street. I could still hear the car engine roaring. I looked out the window and behind the bright headlights I could see dirt flying out from the spinning rear tires of the vehicle. I put some clothes on and went outside. Another man had stopped and run up to the vehicle and turned the engine off. The vehicle was a taxi cab and the driver had been shot and killed. We called the police and they showed up instantly. They cordoned off the area and interviewed everyone around. No one there had seen the assailant, or anything unusual prior to the noise. After a couple of hours the police came back to our apartment and said that the cab had hit our car before turning across the street, breaking through the fence and then looping back towards our apartment. The cab hit a fence post squarely or it may have come right into our kitchen. The damage to our car was minimal. Estimates came to about $600. I contacted the cab driver’s insurance company and they said they would take care of everything. So I filed a claim with them and waited for a check.

A couple weeks later I received a call from them. They told me that they were not liable for the damage. There was no negligence on the part of their insured. Bottom line for them was that a dead person cannot be negligent. Our conversations became somewhat morbid as we discussed when the cab driver actually died. Did he die before he hit my car and then make a turn away from it through the fence across the road and then back towards our apartment? Did the shooter pull the steering wheel to the right? I was 25 or 26 years old - pretty naive. The world hadn’t kicked me around too much yet, but something didn’t make sense to me. I called my insurance company and discussed the accident with them. My agent said that the cab’s insurance company is dead wrong, (pardon the pun). They should be liable for the damage regardless of the timing of the driver’s death. He told me to file a claim with them, fix the car, and then my insurance company would sue the cab’s insurance company for damages in the amount of their claim plus my deductible. This made sense to me and this is the path my wife and I took.

I waited a couple months and hadn’t heard anything from my insurance company. I called, talked to my agent, and then a claims adjustor. When I asked about my accident, he laughed and said that they would not pursue such a small claim. It was less than $300 paid by the insurance company. I told him what I had been told about recovering my deductible I had paid. He laughed again said that my $300 deductible paid was not a concern of theirs. I won’t mention the name of my insurance company, but I canceled my policies with them and vowed never to do business with them again. And told them I surely didn’t feel like I had been in good hands. My only recourse was to create my own bumper sticker. It hung in my cubicle at work for a very short time, there is more to that story, but I can't go there.

To this day I have not done business with that insurance company, I haven’t put a bumper sticker on any of my vehicles, I'm still an opponent of driving dead, and the membership of P.A.D.D. remains at one.