Saturday, July 31, 2010

So, tonight I'm going to do something I have never done on my blog. I'm going to complain for a minute. I'm going to complain because it will make me feel better. There is a purpose, it's not just complaining for the sake of complaining. Once I get this off my mind I will feel better and be able to go on with life.

Ok, here goes...

I was rear ended yesterday. And, frankly, I'm mad about it. Here's what I'm mad about, it should have never happened! I was doing everything right. I was at an intersection where the light was green. I was turning left so I was stopped, yielding to oncoming traffic. I had my blinker on. The pick up truck behind me just simply didn't see me, or so he said. Chances are he was texting or messing with his phone or the radio or reading something. Something distracted him because he had been behind me at the previous stoplight. He knew I was there, but he didn't see me slow down and stop to turn left?? Anyway, The car is crunched, and the appraiser hasn't been out to look at it yet, so we are in limbo with the car, and Derek's $300 Britax Advocate car seat is junk now because any time you get in an accident you have to toss the car seat. So today we trekked down to Wichita to buy a new car seat. (we borrowed one from a friend for the trip down there.) Only to find, of course, that we would be unable to purchase the same car seat as a replacement. Apparently the Advocates are only sold online, well we don't have time to wait around for them to ship one to us because we need it in 3 days to drive to the airport. We couldn't keep the one we borrowed for 2 weeks, so we were stuck. So, we bought a Boulevard instead. I'm mad about that too. Here's the deal, I did a lot of research on car seats before I bought the Advocate. The reason I chose the Advocate over the Boulevard is because of the side impact cushions. The Advocate has them, the Boulevard doesn't. I'm mad because I feel like now my son isn't as safe as he was in the other car seat. And, while this may seem petty, I'm mad that they didn't even have a good fabric pattern in the Boulevard. They had this color that they said was "tan" but it looked like newborn baby poop. And then they had this kinda navy blue colored one with beige designs on it, and trust me it's not as nice as it sounds. It's kinda strange looking actually. But, this one was definitely the lesser of the two evils. So, now we have an ugly car seat that doesn't have the same safety features as our last one all because some moron was too busy with something else to concentrate on driving. Lastly, I'm mad at him. He was nice at the scene (he better have been) he took the tongue lashing I gave him pretty well. The police gave him a couple tickets, which was nice. But I'm still mad. I have a crunched car and an ugly car seat and a ruined weekend, and he wasn't even in his own car. It was a company car! Grrrrr.

Ok, thanks for putting up with that. I'm done complaining now.

6 comments:

  1. oh no!!!! I'm so sorry that happened! I'm very glad it wasn't any more serious though and that you weren't injured. I have a question about the carseat... Can you order an Advocate online and then resell the Boulevard after you get it or just use it as a spare?

    ReplyDelete
  2. oh, I've heard before that some car insurance companies will cover the cost of a new carseat or something like that (or maybe it's the at-fault driver's insurance?), maybe you can look into it and get them to pay you for a new carseat.

    ReplyDelete
  3. ok, just one more, promise! they came out with a higher weight advocate recently and i bet you can get the older version for a good price if you looked around. albeebaby.com has them for $240 and amazon for $260.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Why do you have to get rid of the car seat? I don't get that?

    Can you hang on to the reciept and return it after your trip? It might get dirty, so that might not work I guess.

    What brands are theses? I've never heard of them before.

    I'm sorry, I would be so mad about this too! I had to laugh about the baby poop colored car seat though!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Shell, The rule of thumb for car seat safety is if the car is damaged, so is the car seat. Even if you can't see the damage, there could be tiny stress fractures in the plastic (which if the impact was enough to damage your car there most likely are stress fractures in the plastic) and the straps could stretch. Our LATCH straps stretched out on impact. That was the visible damage. When I went to get Derek out of the seat it was all crooked back there. But the invisible stress caused to the plastic can be devastating if you continue to use the car seat after an accident. If you were to get into another accident the car seat frame could fail entirely causing severe injury or even death.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Yep, I got rid of facebook. I was wondering who would notice first and say something! Thanks for sending me a message it makes me feel good! :)
    I'm not sure if I will come back to it, probably, bc I can't seem to stay away from it when I had it, but we'll see.
    My email is:Arohanfamily@yahoo.com if you want to write me there! You can delete this comment if you want to also!

    ReplyDelete