Fender Bender

Was on my way to Bella’s last soccer game of the season when I got into my first Abu Dhabi Fender Bender.  I was driving up 30th (main road that takes you through town) and a car hit their brakes ahead of me.  I hit mine and could see the car coming up quickly behind me and NOT slowing down.  I held fast to my break and waited for impact.  She hit me hard enough to whip my head a little but not hard enough for my air bag to go off.  Cameron was sleeping in the back seat and didn’t even wake up!

We both put our flashers on and she called 999 (like 911 back home), while I called Brian at work.  The traffic people came quickly and directed us off the road to a small parking lot nearby.  They took picture of the slight damage to our cars and listened to what happened.  We had to wait for the police to get there.  There is actually a company that just handles traffic accidents and that’s who you see first. 

Eventually the embassy person got there (they are helpful since they understand the situation and are bilingual with arabic/english).  The cop prints you off a ticket and you have to sign (it’s completely in Arabic) so it’s helpful to know if you are signing that you are at fault or not.  The “bill” goes onto your car account somewhere and when you register your car you pay off any outstanding traffic/accident tickets that you have.  In this case, I wasn’t at fault so I didn’t have to pay anything but you’re supposed to take care of any car damage within 3 days (which I didn’t realize until after the 3 days were over).

The gal I hit was a local and spoke good English (most of them do).  She was friendly and we chatted a little while waiting for the officials.  All in all it was pretty painless and I was on my way in less than an hour.  I did have Brian come down and meet us and I did get seen by an ambulance.  If you don’t go to the doctor right away then you can’t claim that you have problems from the accident.  I wanted to see someone to be on the safe side and to have them look at Cameron.   I missed most of Bella’s soccer game but the accident could’ve been much worse so I was pretty lucky.

I ended up with a sore neck for a few days and had a chiropractic appointment within a couple weeks to get me back aligned.  All in all – got my first fender bender out of the way pretty painlessly!