October 13, 2015 • 36 mins
It's no secret that car insurance is already a complicated, sometimes surreal industry -- but how weird can it get? Join Scott and Ben as they explore some of the world's weirdest auto insurance claims.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Go behind the wheel, under the hood and beyond with
car stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hi, welcome
card stuff. I'm the guy and I'm then. We are here,
as always with our super producer. Let's see what do
you think for this one? Oh, let's see Noel A
Fleck Brown Mayhem No Mayhem Brown, Yeah, hold of one.
(00:25):
I like it. So here we are with our super producer,
Noel Mayhem Brown and most importantly, ladies and gentlemen, you
are here, which makes this car stuff. We're doing something
a little a little different today. Yeah, it's a bit different.
We're gonna talk about us some insurance claims, right, and
that sounds terribly Yeah, like three people fell asleep automatically. Yeah,
(00:46):
and a lot of people just that hit the skip buck. Yeah.
But no, this is different, you guys because this comes
to us from an article on how Stuff Works, you know,
our parent website. And when we're reading this we thought, well,
you know, guys know Scott's the editors. So occasionally I'll
find a very strange article and send it to him like, hey,
wait where did this come from? Yeah, and this one
(01:09):
is one of the one of our one of our
freelance writers wrote this a while back, and it was
about unusual insurance plans or weird auto insurance plane and
not just like something weird, like like it's crazy a
tree phone car or something like that. These are these
go above and beyond that, and supposedly these are all true,
(01:30):
right right? I always read the I always read these
with just a little bit of skepticism, like how much
of that is really true? How much of is I've
been stretched into a bit of a tall tale because
we've we've heard other stuff, you know, especially with with
you know, doing the urban legends, you know, the snokes
type stuff. There's a seed of truth that grows like
(01:50):
layers and layers of bologna around it. Yeah, you know,
kind of like they Okay, just for instance, like I
always think of this one the guys that supposedly blew
a fuse and their pickup truck and they use a
bullet for the fuse heat it up and ended up
shooting one of them in the leg or something. Yeah,
you know, I don't know about that. Yeah, I know,
I forget what that was ruled as it's probably false.
(02:11):
I think I think it's safe to say that one's malooney.
Yeah again, I have to look on snopes just to
see what they what the official ruling on that one is.
But um, stuff like that. You know, there's there's claims
like that, and these are all auto insurance claims, so
there's some kind of property damage involved with him, and
that's how we hear about them, because otherwise, you know,
there wouldn't be paperwork that supports all this stuff, you know,
the police reports or or whatever. You know that the
(02:32):
insurance claims adjuster reporting some of this kind of like
a hey, you're not gonna believe what I just dealt
with that kind of thing. Yeah, And I'm glad you
said that, because I want to give everybody out there
a little bit of a context here. As you guys know,
I've had numerous various strange and eclectic jobs in my life.
At one time, before I worked for How Stuff Works,
(02:55):
which is way long ago now, right, Scott, I had
a job where in people would call me to uh
talk to their insurance company. And this is a weird
thing I might be telling you guys a secret. So
I worked for a company that sent adjusters all around
the world for car accidents, for property damage and anything
(03:19):
you could imagine, like a boat is attacked by a squid.
I'm kidding. I didn't get that call, but something like that. Uh,
this company would send adjusters there. But people would call
this company thinking they were calling their insurance company. And
the very, the very tricky thing here, Scott, was that
a lot of these insurance companies were smaller operations, so
(03:41):
they couldn't actually could not actually afford to always have
an adjuster on staff. So this other company would field
these calls and send these adjusters on their behalf. Really,
so you would kind of funnel the request to whoever
they need to go to. Right, Yeah, that's interesting. That
sounds like a fascinating job. And I know we've talked
about this in the past on car stuff, but briefly,
(04:03):
it was very very brief, and I think it was
in relation to maybe, um, I want to say, it
was that hurricane Hurricane Katrina, Right, Yeah, there were claims
coming in after that, right Yeah. Hurricane Katrina was probably
one of the rougher moments because the water would be
rising in someone's house and they were physically infirm, and
they had made it up the stairs, and they would
(04:23):
be calling us and saying, well, you know, emergency services
aren't answering. You're the only person I could get through too. Yeah,
that and but that was one of the darker moments.
But the reason I bring all this up and stuff
from my previous life is because and you run into
some weird stuff. Man. I had. I knew every day
(04:44):
that I would that I would at some point here
a crazed person who had just hit a deer, you know.
And I had people call and save the strangest things. Uh,
sometimes in a in a very panic voice, you know,
because the adrenaline is pumping. They've just been rear ended,
or they sideswiped someone else where, they ran a stop light,
(05:07):
and they're trying to very they're trying very hard to
persuade me that it was somehow not their fault. So
they're on the scene. They're on the scene and calling again,
adrenaline flow and all that, trying to get everything out
so that you know about it. And I bet you
did hear some really wild stuff like, you know whatever
wherever it happened, like, uh, I was distracted by a
naked pedestrian or something like that. You know, some crazy
(05:28):
things happening, right. Yeah, it's funny you say that there
was somebody who asked me. As soon as I answered
the phone, they said, uh, it's legal to be naked
inside your own car, right, that was the opener. No, yeah,
you know the call is gonna be a real doozy
at that point. You know, it was a really it was.
It was a really nice, nice person, you know what.
(05:50):
I you know, just tan generally. I keep thinking of
that guy that crashed the Bugatti Veron Remember was it
down in Texas maybe? And uh, And he had no
idea that somebody was at that time taping him with
a cell phone because it's such an unusual car. Somebody
had their phone out taping him. And he said he
swerved to avoid was it a pelican or something just
(06:10):
across the road and there's no pelican's yeah, it's a
weird thing. Pelicans don't appear on camera all the time.
He ditched the car into the water, or he was distracted.
We haven't quite figured that out, but I think he
was like an insurance fraud situation. And he said, there
clearly was a pelican there and I was swerving to
avoid it went right into Yeah. So stuff like that,
I mean, but that's an unusual call, Like I you know,
(06:32):
I just you know, I just submarine my Bugatti veron
avoiding a Pelican something like that. That's a strange call
to get right, Yeah, And it wasn't our job to
figure out if it was true or not. I had
a lot of yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, buddy, I'm not
and you just report the facts. Well, I'm not going
to talk to the cops for you, So you report
(06:52):
the facts as they're presented to you. Let them investigate, right,
And you know, I'm not trying to mess with anybody's day.
They Beviously, we're already having a horrible enough day. But
the reason I say that is because I heard so
much stuff that was just unbelievable. Just why why would you?
Why would you do that? You know, uh, why do
(07:15):
you have your buddies riding in the boat that you're
towing and oh you swerved to avoid what again? Because
it sounds like you swerved to screw with your buddies
who were drinking on a boat that was being hauled
off to the lake. You know, stuff like that. So
you couldn't ask questions like that that you really wanted
(07:35):
to ask you because that's the adjuster, that's not that's
not that thing. But anyhow, anyhow, just to say that,
so we're gonna we're gonna tell you some of these
stranger stories that have been verified, and the reason they
are different to other stories of auto disaster is that
the insurance process has a lot of steps of verification,
(07:58):
as you know if you've ever been involved in and
that acident or a fender vendor. So let's start going
through this now. As you hear these, you guys, think
of the think of the strangest accidents you've seen or
heard of, because we'd love to hear about those two
absolutely please do send those in. And you know, we've
only got five really to report here today. Um, so
you know there's a there's a lot of stories out there.
(08:18):
I know, you know, either this happened to me, or
this happened to an uncle or a brother, mom or
dad or whatever. But you want to start, Let's start
with number five here. Yeah, yeah, let's count down as usual.
I don't necessarily agree with the order of these are in.
I think the craziest one is not necessarily number one. Okay, well,
do you want to just save the craziest one for
the last? Oh? Boy, I don't know. Uh, Well, we'll see,
(08:38):
we'll see, we'll play it by here. Here's how this
one goes. So apparently a couple, a man and a woman,
had failed to tie their mattress securely to the top
of the suv that they were driving, and as they
were driving on I five, the mattress loosed itself from
the moorings and landed in the middle of the highway,
causing a three car crash. Okay, now that's bad enough, right,
and that's that it's not terribly unusual, but it's plausible
(09:00):
and it's unfortunate, exactly right. So um as two good
Samaritans stopped to help, so more people are getting involved here.
The female driver hops back into her suv and flees
the scene. So she's she's leaving behind the male passenger.
I can't to deal with the accident, right, So she
gets back in the car and leaves. He's he's left
standing there on the highway. And shortly thereafter, one of
(09:22):
the other good Samaritans also left the scene because you know,
things were kind of wrapping up the police. Yeah, so
the good the good samaritan leaves and a few miles
down the road, that same samaritan looks in the back
like in the rear view mirror. I know he can't
control your laughter. Been um, he's so he sees a
man's head in his back the back seat of his car.
(09:42):
It's the male passenger from the SUV that was trying
to get away from the scene by hiding in the
Good Samaritans car, right, So he has stowed away because
he thought, what's the best way to get out of
this accident scene? You know, it's clever, but it's of
course it's illegal. But how straight it kind of is really?
I mean, he's he's found a simple way to get
(10:03):
away from there other than running away. Boy, you'd have
to have a really good line though, if you pop
up in the back of someone's car and you're like, well,
I can explain everything, well done, how about this remember
me a few miles back? How strange is that? I
mean they both ended up leaving the scene. Of course
both of them are you know, caught, but man, terrible.
I I think it's strange. I've seen you know, there's
(10:25):
nothing funny about the kind of hit and run things,
especially given how prevalent they can be. But for Pete's sake,
if something drops off of your car, or your truck
pull over and do your best to get it out
of the road. I had one of the most unusual
things that I've almost hit on the road the other day.
This is This is maybe a few weeks ago, and
(10:47):
maybe I've very even mentioned this on the show because
I was stunned by this when I saw it. I
almost hit a sink in the road on on the
highway is on Georgia four hundred, so we're traveling at
you know, seventy seventy. I know you mentioned this to
me off air, but I don't know if it made
it on the air. This is a kitchen sync. It's
a stainless steel kitchen sinc. Like one of those two
(11:08):
basin very standard, you know, very simple. It's not anything
you know, unusual or anything very simple too, basin sinc.
But it's it's really big when it's outside, you know,
out from underneath the cabinets. You know that when it's
when it's out laying in the road. He was laying
right in the dead middle of the lane. You had
to get out of your lane. And again we're going
seventy five. The car in front of me swerved so
(11:29):
that I had very little time I went, I went
the opposite direction and went on the shoulder. Um, and
luckily it was available, you know, I could get there,
but um, that was gonna do some real damage. And
it ended up you know, twenty minutes later. I heard
about it on the news, you know, like on the
on the radio, the traffic report. Kitchen sinc. Yeah, they
said that, you know, people are swerving or you know,
there's a slowdown because there's a kitchen sink in the road.
(11:51):
I you know, I guess one of the weirdest things
that I almost hit in the road non living was
a lazy boy recliner I am imagine was lazy boy.
It looked like that, and it was out it The
thing was wasn't on inside or anything. Somehow wherever it fallen,
it fell upright and it's just there as though someone
(12:12):
was going to sit in it and watch on coming traffic.
Can you imagine the damage that would do? Or you know,
I've I've hit one time I launch here that when
it fell out, it's it's somehow assembled. It's like it
stood up. It was one of the older style with
the webbing, you know, the the nylon webbing. Yeah, just
a single like a sit up type, you know, the
straight up and down type. And but I hit it
(12:32):
full on with my car, my Festiva when I had it,
and it broke out a floodlight and you know, scuffed
up the front bumper and everything. I had to pull
over because it was dragging it underneath the car. Um.
I was really angry about that, But I guess, you know,
it probably just flew out of someone's pickup truck or something,
or off a trailer maybe, yeah, quite possibly, but still securely. Anyway,
(12:52):
I'm getting away from because I'm about to start complaining
about all the weird stuff people have falling off the cars,
like drawers out of of you know, um dressers that
they don't secure if they could turn and it all
spills out, or a hubcap cover that just sort of
frisbees off. You know, I always wanna it's happened to everybody.
You see other motorists and you see something visibly wrong
(13:14):
with their car, and you think, how do I alert them?
You know, do they already know? Like clearly if they
have a bad tail pipe, they already know because that
you see that they've tied it up. I tried desperately
to uh to warn an RV owner at the top,
you know, the air conditioner tops, the covers, like the
plastic covers at the back end of his vehicle. It
(13:34):
was just flapping in the windows, ready to break off
any second. And I tried desperately to get that guy's
attention on the last road trip that I was on.
Couldn't get his attention. And uh, and I'm sure, I'm
sure that it blew off at some point. I didn't
want to be behind him what it happened, So, you know,
I couldn't get him to look look down at me. Yeah,
it's weird because sometimes trying to communicate between cars, it
(13:55):
makes like this. Uh, it's almost like slapstick. It's like
Larry Moan curly kind of They think you're angry at them,
or they think that you're a crazy person or something,
you know, but you're just trying to warn them that
something's happening. And if you can't you can't get that
message across with the hand gestures, it's not gonna happen, right, right, right,
And one man's helpful hand gesture is another one's obscene one. Right,
(14:17):
So here is number four, All right, this driver reports
on his insurance claim. We have no date for this.
Scott that he was involved in a minor rear end
collision in which he smashed the tail light of the
car in front of them. He reversed slightly so he
could see the damage, and when he reversed he hit
the front bumper the driver behind boy. And then when
(14:39):
he opened the door to exit the vehicle, he knocked
down someone on a bicycle passing cyclist he closed line
to bicycles. You're kidding me. So now there's four vehicles
involved in this whole thing. There's the car, his car, yeah,
one in front, one behind, and now a cyclist that
was passing by. Right, So he's particularly he has made
three close friends, and it has like a like a
(15:01):
I'm just like a slapstick accident, like a Keystone Cops
moment or something. Man, I would hate to be no kidding,
all right, So number three, let's move on to that one.
I like to title this one it's oh hail no
like the way I say that too. Oh hal no. Alright.
So this guy Tim Highland, I guess he's the president
(15:22):
of an insurance company called Block and Highland Incorporated. I
don't know how important that is for the story. But anyway, Um,
so he recalls a hail storm back in the nineteen
nineties that caused a well, here we go again, a
hail of a lot of damage um and insurance claims right.
So among them was one rather suspicious claim for a
heavy hail damage or heavy hail damage to a car.
(15:43):
When the adjuster inspected the damage, he was skeptical that
the hale could have actually caused these perfectly symmetrical round
divots that peppered the entire surface of the damage car.
Right away, that already tells you there's something up there.
They're exactly perfectly symmetrical. Yeah. Um, you know what hals like.
It's like a rock almost right, alright, So um Highland's
(16:03):
company reject the claim initially, and he told the claimant
that clearly the vehicle had been purposely damaged, not by hale,
but by a ball peen hammer. So this guy right
away says, I can see what's happened here. This this
car has been hit by hammer, not by hale. It's
not an act of God or you know the type
of weather. Um, this is this is something that's been
purposefully done. And you know, this guy, Highland, I'm gonna
(16:26):
read between the lines here, Ben, He probably knows that
the claimant is the one who did this to his
own vehicle to to follow file a false claim. Maybe
the paint was bad on the car. Maybe he's just
done with it because they might total the whole thing.
So alright, So Hiland figured that the client would be
so embarrassed at being caught, you know, with his obvious
attempt at insurance for a that he would simply drop
the whole matter. Instead, the guy goes and files a
(16:49):
police report claiming that an unknown assailant had beaten his
car with a ball peen hammer. So he doesn't think
that the two you know, the insurance company is going
to report that to the police, and the police department's
not gonna look into a faulty claim that he had made.
I don't understand it. So this guy, I mean when
I read this, I was like, what is what's going on?
So this is not only that the client filed a
(17:11):
new insurance claim and this time you know, saying that
you know, this has been done with the you know,
on purpose by somebody who attacked his vehicle. So this time,
because they couldn't prove that the client was the one
that inflicted the damage himself, Hiland's company. The guy who
initially busted him for this had to pay the claim.
Can you believe it's that's so backwards, that should never happen.
(17:34):
They should just some things I think they need to
look at with common sense. This is a common sense thing.
This is he's he was trying to say that, you know,
Hailed did this damage, and then it was evident that
it was Balbin hammers. We switches a story and it says, oh,
but that wasn't me, and then he gets away. Yeah, yeah,
exactly right. He got away with it, and it was
(17:54):
paid for the vehicle by the guy that busted him initially.
So how twisted is that? That's that's a big us.
That's not the best moral to walk away with. No,
I mean, it's so right. This this is wrong in
a lot of different ways, all right. So our next
tale comes to us from a guy named Ron Hetler,
and Ron remembers a claim from his very first year
(18:15):
in the business. A client of his was apparently driving
around in a pickup truck and had a shotgun writing
wait for it, shotgun. Uh, And when when the guy
got to wherever he's going, he grabs the shotgun, he
hops out the cab, he loses his grip, he discharges
the gun. He wasn't sure if he fired it while
he's grabbing for it, or if it went off by
(18:37):
itself as it hit the ground. It was loaded with buckshot,
and luckily the guy wasn't injured. But the truck's interior,
of course, is just garbage. Now. Unbelievably shot his own
interior with buckshot. So imagine that going every you know,
the windshield has done, the seat, covers, the dashboard, anything
in there is is trash, destroy everything. So the guy
(19:01):
had something called uh comprehensive or other than collision damage,
which covers a lot of really weird stuff, including shooting
your own pickup truck. You know, that's a good lesson
to learn. I guess maybe that's maybe the type of
insurances you get if your your accident pronell also don't
grab a gun in a hurry. Yeah again, well that's
(19:21):
another great lesson to learn. Who should have been taught
in the gun safety court. Yeah, apparently didn't take But man,
that's that's a terrible story too, because and if this
truly was accidental and then happened, your vehicle in a second,
like your whole car is just destroyed. I mean that
that would do so much damage inside a vehicle, it's unbelievable.
I mean you got to think about how how um
(19:44):
how awful that would be. That every surface, every single
piece of that vehicle. I mean that, like you said,
the dash, the steering wheel, if there were airbags in
the car, those are destroyed. The windshield, probably the side glass,
and this thing, the seats, everything, it's headliner, it's all gone. Now,
Can I be honest with you, This one doesn't seem
that weird to me, really, because it seems like this
(20:09):
accidental discharge of a firearm happens way more often than
one might think. I guess so. But what I'm thinking
of this one is though the heat. First of all,
he didn't injure himself for anybody else, and that's strange. Um,
but when he dropped it, when he drops it, he's
probably dropping it from my So clearly he said when
it hit the ground, it might have gone off. So
that means that it's a low angle shots that's shooting
(20:30):
up and into the truck. Um, so that's probably doing
like the most damage. I suppose, like the best angle
for damage to it to occur. Um, it's just a
it's a strange story. It does grip me as being
like um, an unusual circumstances, especially and that he didn't
shoot his own leg or something in the process. Yeah,
he lucked out on that. Yeah, very lucky. So we
have one more left. Yeah, this is a I gotta say, Ben,
(20:53):
this isn't the most unusual one to me, And I
don't know why. Maybe it's because of um all the
auto blogs and stuff that I read that sometimes sometimes
this happens. So what we're talking about is a hippie
van's long strange trip, as the author wrote. And really
it's kind of a two part tale because there's the
initial story, which started in nineteen seventy four. Um, a
(21:15):
lady named Michelle Squires of Washington. She drove her beloved
hippie van to an upholstery shop to have the fold
down bed, to have a fold down bed installed in
the back. Funny, I already find this funny. Alright, So
sometimes you gotta take a nap, yeah, I guess so.
So then the van disappears from the shop's parking lot,
(21:35):
and Squires, who of course love the van, filed a
claim with her insurance company, which was all stated at
the time, and they reimbursed her for roughly six hundred
dollars for the vehicle. That's what it was worth, six
hundred bucks. So she, you know, she gets the check
from the insurance company and everything's all done right, and yeah,
that's it, they said, that's about what I paid for
the vehicle. I've I've broken even on it. That's fine.
(21:56):
Should be the end of the story. Thirty five years later,
when you when a US Customs and Border Protection official
in Los Angeles recovered a perfectly restored, still running VW
minibus from a shipping container that was bound for the Netherlands.
They ran the vin and found that it was discovered
it was discovered that it was the same vehicle that
had been reported stolen from Squares back in nineteen seventy four.
(22:20):
So thirty five years later, this thing has found. Yet
it's in far better condition than it was initially. So
the van, which is now officially owned by all State
right because they had given her the check for six
hundred bucks back in um. They say that this this
minibus is worth about twenty five thousand dollars now at
this point. So this is a weird position to be in, right,
(22:42):
because she initially wanted her vehicle back, but she did
take the check for it, the six hundred dollar check
for it. Now she's saying that, you know, I'd still
like the vehicle back. Um, I don't know if she can,
you know, opt to give them back to her their
six hundred dollars. But they're saying, oh, no, that's not
the case. Here. We own this microbus or this minibus,
and it's worth dollars. It's ours. We bought it from you,
(23:05):
we bought the rights to it. I guess, so there's
a bit of a dispute over who owns it, you know,
her the insurance company, and um, I don't know. It's
it's an interesting tale, I guess. But what I'm saying
is that I think I've heard about this maybe three
or four times in the last three or four years,
where a cars found decades later that somebody had lost,
and you know, the story doesn't usually involve an insurance
(23:27):
company and who owns it or all that. It's usually
just kind of an oddity, you know, like you just
mentioned as Hey, by the way, this happened over in Washington,
as well, um or in California wherever that someone lost
a corvette and you know, forty years later it turns
up UM at a corvette show, you know, and they
recognize it as this person's vehicle. Somehow, It's it's distinguishable
(23:47):
other than the event, right, And we want to hear
what your weird stories are, Scott, I'll go ahead and
ask on behalf of the listeners and on behalf of Noel, Uh,
do you have any you have any weird auto stories?
You know, any la la rona, any ghost hitchhikers. No,
you know, not really, I think um. I was trying
to think of anything that that's unusual has happened to me.
(24:09):
It hasn't been like an insurance claim. I mean, it's
usually encounters with things on the road, like hitting the
lawn chair or um, you know, nearly hitting the sink,
or you know, passing by a you know, a fifty
inch television that's sitting on the side of the road
that looks like it's like a setup, like a trap
or something. You know, just unusual stuff like that. But
but nothing that I've ever had to file a claim for,
like damaged the vehicle that UM is somehow questioned by
(24:32):
the insurance company. Out of out of concerns for privacy,
I'll tell one more sort but out of concerns for privacy,
I don't. I can't be too specific, and I can't
use any names. But multiple times I had people call
me asking for legal advice. Uh, in in ways that
(24:55):
we're just in ways that we're really sad, because you know,
these sorts of calls are recorded for legal reasons. But
and people call me and say, like, uh, people call
me and say, like, man, that deer was as drunk
as I was, Or how about does you ever get
this one? Like, now, let's just take this as a hypothetical,
(25:19):
what if the car were to roll off of a pier. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
that kind of I got those. Yeah, I got um
as I was yeah, and then never mind, and then
I got my favorite was this guy called see like, uh, like,
nobody can get du out a tractor, right, which is
(25:40):
not true. You can. Yeah, you're operating a vehicle, you're
operating a motive ehicle, and really anything that you can
take on the road you can be arrested for if
you're under the influence, and that tractor qualifies, right, that
makes sense? Uh, I had people, of course like also
say a uh okay, now just between us, off the record,
(26:04):
and I like, this call is being recorded, and they're like,
off the record, Uh, if there are if there is
something illegal in a car and you know, like it
doesn't belong to you and you'll know how it got
there or anything like that, that that can't be like
on you, right, And I said, well, yeah, it's I'm
(26:26):
not a cop nor my lawyer. I can't give you
legal advice. Uh. What I can help is if you're
reporting an incident and they're like, no, you're my insurance.
You're supposed to tell me these things. And I think
you're supposed to call your lawyer at this point. Has
there been an accident? It's like, uh no, but I've
been a customer for three years, and like I, I
(26:47):
don't know if there's the right attitude. You watch one
single episode of Cops. You'll get the answer to that. Yeah, right,
one single episode. Yeah, it'll happen four times in that episode.
And with that, the vast majority. With that said, the
vast majority of people, well where we're nice, you know,
considering what they were going through. And most of the
companies that I had worked with or it seemed from
(27:08):
the other side, were you know, on the up and
up they weren't trying to retous reputable places. Yeah, they
were reputable places. Uh. So we are going to we're
going to head out. We want to hear your strangest
car stories. Yeah, and and limit these two ones that
you have actually made a claim for that where you
had to you had to explain to somebody that's how
(27:28):
this crazy situation happened. What had happened was now legally,
if it's a clown car, there's no limit on how
many people can be in there. Right now. This is
before the hippopotamus appeared before the vehicle. Right now, this
this is a strange twist. And let me walk you
back through that. Do you have a pen and paper?
(27:49):
I want you to draw this diagram. I had people
ask that too. Oh yeah, So before we head out,
we'll go ahead and read a little listener mail. Sure,
let's do it all right. So this listener mail comes
to us from uh Aaron C himself the coop UH.
And as you know, Aaron has written into us before.
(28:13):
He has occasionally sent uh I guess artwork interpretive artwork.
He wrote some Limericks earlier too, so he's writing now
I'm not gonna read all this, but he wrote in
and he said, hey, Ben, I just heard about your
new wheels on the podcast at a few thoughts on
the matter. On what your escape were we talking about
(28:34):
is just prior to the new global body style. If so,
then it should be fairly similar to the one I had.
Mine was a two thousand two though, so its non
hybrid V six four World drive model. I loved it. Unfortunately,
it was murdered by a rogue white tail a few
Christmases ago. So unfortunately he had dear huge problem, you
know in this country. He wrote in with this, and
(28:55):
he and that at that time he bought a Ford Fusion.
I think, yeah, yeah, he bought a Ford Fusion, a
blue one, a beautiful car. Yeah he uh. He said
that otherwise he'd still be happily driving the Escape to
this day. His only real complaint was that the rear
wiper was useless after a few years. And uh. The
and this was before Ford stepped up their game with interiors.
(29:17):
The door panels and dash or made of what he
likes to call tackle box plastic. And he just says,
you know, the kind you know what when he said that,
when he said, I totally get it. It's the same
kind of plastic. It's a perfect description of that. I've
never heard it described that way, and that was that
was a great way to put it. So he says.
He talks about how his dream ride has always been
(29:38):
a Mustang, specifically sixty seven to sixty eight GT. But
because of the pesky thing known as the quote unquote
real world, he had to make the hard decision to
not get the Mustang yet and switch from Ford to Chevy. Uh.
And his point, his history up to that point has
always been a Ford lineup sevente Ranger to Escape thirteen Fusion,
(30:03):
and he he said, just like you called it, Scott,
he was like, the problem is, after getting to know
and love my Fusion, there were made way too many
things in the high tech department that I felt I
didn't want to lose. When he decided he needed something
more versatile, so he felt that something new or newish
would be his best and since Ford ceased production of
(30:23):
the Ranger after two thousand and eleven, he had to
switch brands for the first time ever. Here were his options.
Ladies and gentlemen, a Tacoma, A Frontier or Colorado. So
he orders the Colorado and he says it's a winner,
extended cab two will drive Z's seventy one four cylinder
model and red Rock metallic and uh, he said he
(30:47):
likes it a lot, except he heard that Ford is
now finally considering bringing the Global Ranger to the US.
Can't win them all. I just missed it that one.
If you only had a few more well I don't
know when he bought that, but maybe a few more
months you have held off a Yeah, well, you can
never predict the future. So the Global Ranger, Global Rangers
(31:11):
coming to America, those are the rumors. Yeah, I don't
know if there's official confirmation yet. Interesting, what year is
your your escape? My escape is a two thousand and
eight eight. I'm gonna have to get used to saying
this now. I can't even put the two of you together,
the Escape and and Ben so accustomed to people don't
recognize me in it, yeah, to seeing you in the Monty.
(31:32):
I mean, it's just it's tough to get something associated
with somebody you keep wanting to go back to that.
It's just like it's weird. It's like when I meet
somebody and I see the car they drive, then in
my head, now and forever, that is the car that
they drive. And if I see another car of the
same paint color, the same model and stuff, I will
assume it as them. You can look for that person
(31:54):
driving that vehicle right right. Yeah, So so it's weird,
you know. I I also did a double take before
I saw you driving through in the v W. It's like,
what what you know? Just this happened just to two
or three days ago. You were out outside the building.
I gave a little two with the horn. I tried
to you know what, here's the thing. My other car
I was able to give like just a little a
couple of little beeps, you know, just to let somebody
(32:15):
know you're there. This one, you touch the horn and
it's loud, I mean, and it kind of shrugged my
shoulders like oh man sucked down like oh sorry about that,
because it sounded more like an angry honk than you know,
the little too too too. Uh hey I'm over here
trying away through your exactly. I felt kind of like
a jerk because I think you kind of you jumped
when I when I honked the horn you were really close.
(32:35):
I'm a jumpy guy. Yeah, I'm froggy. Yeah. It's funny
how you do kind of you get accustomed to seeing
somebody in a certain type of vehicle or talking about them,
you know, talking with them about that vehicle, and uh,
and then once they change that, it's tough too. It's
tough to adapt. So you're making it rough on me, Ben,
That's what I'm saying. You're making it rough on me
with the switch. Well, I'm glad, you know, because nothing,
(32:56):
nothing concerns me more than things. You know that, Like
I wake up sometimes in a cold sweat worried that
you might be happy. Now I'm just trying to cause
some friction. Yeah, yeah, you know what I'm gonna I'm
gonna show up one day and that Dodge DIORA. I
hope you do, because then I would, you know, I
love that. I would. I love that you would love
to see We still haven't gotten Old's opinion on that. Yeah,
(33:20):
we haven't gotten Old's opinion on that yet. Well let's
do that now. Yeah. Hey, no, no time like a brother. None.
Hey no, Hey, Bennet Scott, I've got a got a
question for you. We've got a question for you. Shoot,
So a while back, we were talking about in a
previous episode, we were talking about a vehicle called the
Dodge DOORA notice, I say vehicle, not car, not truck,
(33:43):
this vehicle. And uh, we're trying to decide whether we
as a show or for it or against it. So
we want your vote. We're at an impass. Yeah, we're
not gonna say a word either way. So this is unased.
This is on. Yeah, what just give us, like, take
a look at it and give us your an initial thoughts.
(34:05):
This is like a clown car man, what's going on here?
One of them looks like it looks like a hot wheel.
It looks like a like a weird like bastardized El Camino.
I don't understand what I'm looking at. There's two different ones,
Like one of them is very like boxy and looks
like it has like a swimming pool in the back
or something. And then the other one is like purple.
(34:26):
It looks like the Oscar Meyer wienermobile. Which one are
you guys thinking of? The first one? There's like a
it opens in the front, there's no side. I'm gonna
I'm gonna crib one of your one of your words, Ben,
it's cartoonishly stupid. Oh that's too that's to two and one,
isn't it very disappointing? Well, this is democracy and action, Scott,
(34:49):
very disappointing. So I'm I'm in the minority here on
this one. It looks like it would flip right over
front ways. Man, Oh my god. Okay, we'll see what
listeners have to think. Yeah, well, geez, thanks Doul, thanks
for stopping in. Well, we always a pleasure, always great. Hey,
but look, that was it was very democratic of us.
(35:11):
I wish it had gone the other way. I know,
I just I just wanted to close. It was the one.
I think we'll have plenty of other opportunities and grants
on the victory, and we'll see how the listeners wait
as well. Now, so we're still we're still kind of
calling the response. We're still feeling that one out. In
the meantime, check us out on Facebook and Twitter, and
if you have suggestions for an upcoming episode, we'd love
(35:33):
to hear from you. If you have reactions to what
we've been talking about here, or if you want to
just rant about the state of insurance in general. Hey, guys,
I'm there right there with you so you can contact
us directly. Our email addressing is our stuff at how
stuff work dot got so. More on this and thousands
(35:54):
of other topics is how stuff works dot com. Let
us know what you think. Send an email to podcast
It has the Horse dot momm
Go behind the wheel, under the hood and beyond with
car stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hi, welcome
card stuff. I'm the guy and I'm then. We are here,
as always with our super producer. Let's see what do
you think for this one? Oh, let's see Noel A
Fleck Brown Mayhem No Mayhem Brown, Yeah, hold of one.
(00:25):
I like it. So here we are with our super producer,
Noel Mayhem Brown and most importantly, ladies and gentlemen, you
are here, which makes this car stuff. We're doing something
a little a little different today. Yeah, it's a bit different.
We're gonna talk about us some insurance claims, right, and
that sounds terribly Yeah, like three people fell asleep automatically. Yeah,
(00:46):
and a lot of people just that hit the skip buck. Yeah.
But no, this is different, you guys because this comes
to us from an article on how Stuff Works, you know,
our parent website. And when we're reading this we thought, well,
you know, guys know Scott's the editors. So occasionally I'll
find a very strange article and send it to him like, hey,
wait where did this come from? Yeah, and this one
(01:09):
is one of the one of our one of our
freelance writers wrote this a while back, and it was
about unusual insurance plans or weird auto insurance plane and
not just like something weird, like like it's crazy a
tree phone car or something like that. These are these
go above and beyond that, and supposedly these are all true,
(01:30):
right right? I always read the I always read these
with just a little bit of skepticism, like how much
of that is really true? How much of is I've
been stretched into a bit of a tall tale because
we've we've heard other stuff, you know, especially with with
you know, doing the urban legends, you know, the snokes
type stuff. There's a seed of truth that grows like
(01:50):
layers and layers of bologna around it. Yeah, you know,
kind of like they Okay, just for instance, like I
always think of this one the guys that supposedly blew
a fuse and their pickup truck and they use a
bullet for the fuse heat it up and ended up
shooting one of them in the leg or something. Yeah,
you know, I don't know about that. Yeah, I know,
I forget what that was ruled as it's probably false.
(02:11):
I think I think it's safe to say that one's malooney.
Yeah again, I have to look on snopes just to
see what they what the official ruling on that one is.
But um, stuff like that. You know, there's there's claims
like that, and these are all auto insurance claims, so
there's some kind of property damage involved with him, and
that's how we hear about them, because otherwise, you know,
there wouldn't be paperwork that supports all this stuff, you know,
the police reports or or whatever. You know that the
(02:32):
insurance claims adjuster reporting some of this kind of like
a hey, you're not gonna believe what I just dealt
with that kind of thing. Yeah, And I'm glad you
said that, because I want to give everybody out there
a little bit of a context here. As you guys know,
I've had numerous various strange and eclectic jobs in my life.
At one time, before I worked for How Stuff Works,
(02:55):
which is way long ago now, right, Scott, I had
a job where in people would call me to uh
talk to their insurance company. And this is a weird
thing I might be telling you guys a secret. So
I worked for a company that sent adjusters all around
the world for car accidents, for property damage and anything
(03:19):
you could imagine, like a boat is attacked by a squid.
I'm kidding. I didn't get that call, but something like that. Uh,
this company would send adjusters there. But people would call
this company thinking they were calling their insurance company. And
the very, the very tricky thing here, Scott, was that
a lot of these insurance companies were smaller operations, so
(03:41):
they couldn't actually could not actually afford to always have
an adjuster on staff. So this other company would field
these calls and send these adjusters on their behalf. Really,
so you would kind of funnel the request to whoever
they need to go to. Right, Yeah, that's interesting. That
sounds like a fascinating job. And I know we've talked
about this in the past on car stuff, but briefly,
(04:03):
it was very very brief, and I think it was
in relation to maybe, um, I want to say, it
was that hurricane Hurricane Katrina, Right, Yeah, there were claims
coming in after that, right Yeah. Hurricane Katrina was probably
one of the rougher moments because the water would be
rising in someone's house and they were physically infirm, and
they had made it up the stairs, and they would
(04:23):
be calling us and saying, well, you know, emergency services
aren't answering. You're the only person I could get through too. Yeah,
that and but that was one of the darker moments.
But the reason I bring all this up and stuff
from my previous life is because and you run into
some weird stuff. Man. I had. I knew every day
(04:44):
that I would that I would at some point here
a crazed person who had just hit a deer, you know.
And I had people call and save the strangest things. Uh,
sometimes in a in a very panic voice, you know,
because the adrenaline is pumping. They've just been rear ended,
or they sideswiped someone else where, they ran a stop light,
(05:07):
and they're trying to very they're trying very hard to
persuade me that it was somehow not their fault. So
they're on the scene. They're on the scene and calling again,
adrenaline flow and all that, trying to get everything out
so that you know about it. And I bet you
did hear some really wild stuff like, you know whatever
wherever it happened, like, uh, I was distracted by a
naked pedestrian or something like that. You know, some crazy
(05:28):
things happening, right. Yeah, it's funny you say that there
was somebody who asked me. As soon as I answered
the phone, they said, uh, it's legal to be naked
inside your own car, right, that was the opener. No, yeah,
you know the call is gonna be a real doozy
at that point. You know, it was a really it was.
It was a really nice, nice person, you know what.
(05:50):
I you know, just tan generally. I keep thinking of
that guy that crashed the Bugatti Veron Remember was it
down in Texas maybe? And uh, And he had no
idea that somebody was at that time taping him with
a cell phone because it's such an unusual car. Somebody
had their phone out taping him. And he said he
swerved to avoid was it a pelican or something just
(06:10):
across the road and there's no pelican's yeah, it's a
weird thing. Pelicans don't appear on camera all the time.
He ditched the car into the water, or he was distracted.
We haven't quite figured that out, but I think he
was like an insurance fraud situation. And he said, there
clearly was a pelican there and I was swerving to
avoid it went right into Yeah. So stuff like that,
I mean, but that's an unusual call, Like I you know,
(06:32):
I just you know, I just submarine my Bugatti veron
avoiding a Pelican something like that. That's a strange call
to get right, Yeah, And it wasn't our job to
figure out if it was true or not. I had
a lot of yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, buddy, I'm not
and you just report the facts. Well, I'm not going
to talk to the cops for you, So you report
(06:52):
the facts as they're presented to you. Let them investigate, right,
And you know, I'm not trying to mess with anybody's day.
They Beviously, we're already having a horrible enough day. But
the reason I say that is because I heard so
much stuff that was just unbelievable. Just why why would you?
Why would you do that? You know, uh, why do
(07:15):
you have your buddies riding in the boat that you're
towing and oh you swerved to avoid what again? Because
it sounds like you swerved to screw with your buddies
who were drinking on a boat that was being hauled
off to the lake. You know, stuff like that. So
you couldn't ask questions like that that you really wanted
(07:35):
to ask you because that's the adjuster, that's not that's
not that thing. But anyhow, anyhow, just to say that,
so we're gonna we're gonna tell you some of these
stranger stories that have been verified, and the reason they
are different to other stories of auto disaster is that
the insurance process has a lot of steps of verification,
(07:58):
as you know if you've ever been involved in and
that acident or a fender vendor. So let's start going
through this now. As you hear these, you guys, think
of the think of the strangest accidents you've seen or
heard of, because we'd love to hear about those two
absolutely please do send those in. And you know, we've
only got five really to report here today. Um, so
you know there's a there's a lot of stories out there.
(08:18):
I know, you know, either this happened to me, or
this happened to an uncle or a brother, mom or
dad or whatever. But you want to start, Let's start
with number five here. Yeah, yeah, let's count down as usual.
I don't necessarily agree with the order of these are in.
I think the craziest one is not necessarily number one. Okay, well,
do you want to just save the craziest one for
the last? Oh? Boy, I don't know. Uh, Well, we'll see,
(08:38):
we'll see, we'll play it by here. Here's how this
one goes. So apparently a couple, a man and a woman,
had failed to tie their mattress securely to the top
of the suv that they were driving, and as they
were driving on I five, the mattress loosed itself from
the moorings and landed in the middle of the highway,
causing a three car crash. Okay, now that's bad enough, right,
and that's that it's not terribly unusual, but it's plausible
(09:00):
and it's unfortunate, exactly right. So um as two good
Samaritans stopped to help, so more people are getting involved here.
The female driver hops back into her suv and flees
the scene. So she's she's leaving behind the male passenger.
I can't to deal with the accident, right, So she
gets back in the car and leaves. He's he's left
standing there on the highway. And shortly thereafter, one of
(09:22):
the other good Samaritans also left the scene because you know,
things were kind of wrapping up the police. Yeah, so
the good the good samaritan leaves and a few miles
down the road, that same samaritan looks in the back
like in the rear view mirror. I know he can't
control your laughter. Been um, he's so he sees a
man's head in his back the back seat of his car.
(09:42):
It's the male passenger from the SUV that was trying
to get away from the scene by hiding in the
Good Samaritans car, right, So he has stowed away because
he thought, what's the best way to get out of
this accident scene? You know, it's clever, but it's of
course it's illegal. But how straight it kind of is really?
I mean, he's he's found a simple way to get
(10:03):
away from there other than running away. Boy, you'd have
to have a really good line though, if you pop
up in the back of someone's car and you're like, well,
I can explain everything, well done, how about this remember
me a few miles back? How strange is that? I
mean they both ended up leaving the scene. Of course
both of them are you know, caught, but man, terrible.
I I think it's strange. I've seen you know, there's
(10:25):
nothing funny about the kind of hit and run things,
especially given how prevalent they can be. But for Pete's sake,
if something drops off of your car, or your truck
pull over and do your best to get it out
of the road. I had one of the most unusual
things that I've almost hit on the road the other day.
This is This is maybe a few weeks ago, and
(10:47):
maybe I've very even mentioned this on the show because
I was stunned by this when I saw it. I
almost hit a sink in the road on on the
highway is on Georgia four hundred, so we're traveling at
you know, seventy seventy. I know you mentioned this to
me off air, but I don't know if it made
it on the air. This is a kitchen sync. It's
a stainless steel kitchen sinc. Like one of those two
(11:08):
basin very standard, you know, very simple. It's not anything
you know, unusual or anything very simple too, basin sinc.
But it's it's really big when it's outside, you know,
out from underneath the cabinets. You know that when it's
when it's out laying in the road. He was laying
right in the dead middle of the lane. You had
to get out of your lane. And again we're going
seventy five. The car in front of me swerved so
(11:29):
that I had very little time I went, I went
the opposite direction and went on the shoulder. Um, and
luckily it was available, you know, I could get there,
but um, that was gonna do some real damage. And
it ended up you know, twenty minutes later. I heard
about it on the news, you know, like on the
on the radio, the traffic report. Kitchen sinc. Yeah, they
said that, you know, people are swerving or you know,
there's a slowdown because there's a kitchen sink in the road.
(11:51):
I you know, I guess one of the weirdest things
that I almost hit in the road non living was
a lazy boy recliner I am imagine was lazy boy.
It looked like that, and it was out it The
thing was wasn't on inside or anything. Somehow wherever it fallen,
it fell upright and it's just there as though someone
(12:12):
was going to sit in it and watch on coming traffic.
Can you imagine the damage that would do? Or you know,
I've I've hit one time I launch here that when
it fell out, it's it's somehow assembled. It's like it
stood up. It was one of the older style with
the webbing, you know, the the nylon webbing. Yeah, just
a single like a sit up type, you know, the
straight up and down type. And but I hit it
(12:32):
full on with my car, my Festiva when I had it,
and it broke out a floodlight and you know, scuffed
up the front bumper and everything. I had to pull
over because it was dragging it underneath the car. Um.
I was really angry about that, But I guess, you know,
it probably just flew out of someone's pickup truck or something,
or off a trailer maybe, yeah, quite possibly, but still securely. Anyway,
(12:52):
I'm getting away from because I'm about to start complaining
about all the weird stuff people have falling off the cars,
like drawers out of of you know, um dressers that
they don't secure if they could turn and it all
spills out, or a hubcap cover that just sort of
frisbees off. You know, I always wanna it's happened to everybody.
You see other motorists and you see something visibly wrong
(13:14):
with their car, and you think, how do I alert them?
You know, do they already know? Like clearly if they
have a bad tail pipe, they already know because that
you see that they've tied it up. I tried desperately
to uh to warn an RV owner at the top,
you know, the air conditioner tops, the covers, like the
plastic covers at the back end of his vehicle. It
(13:34):
was just flapping in the windows, ready to break off
any second. And I tried desperately to get that guy's
attention on the last road trip that I was on.
Couldn't get his attention. And uh, and I'm sure, I'm
sure that it blew off at some point. I didn't
want to be behind him what it happened, So, you know,
I couldn't get him to look look down at me. Yeah,
it's weird because sometimes trying to communicate between cars, it
(13:55):
makes like this. Uh, it's almost like slapstick. It's like
Larry Moan curly kind of They think you're angry at them,
or they think that you're a crazy person or something,
you know, but you're just trying to warn them that
something's happening. And if you can't you can't get that
message across with the hand gestures, it's not gonna happen, right, right, right,
And one man's helpful hand gesture is another one's obscene one. Right,
(14:17):
So here is number four, All right, this driver reports
on his insurance claim. We have no date for this.
Scott that he was involved in a minor rear end
collision in which he smashed the tail light of the
car in front of them. He reversed slightly so he
could see the damage, and when he reversed he hit
the front bumper the driver behind boy. And then when
(14:39):
he opened the door to exit the vehicle, he knocked
down someone on a bicycle passing cyclist he closed line
to bicycles. You're kidding me. So now there's four vehicles
involved in this whole thing. There's the car, his car, yeah,
one in front, one behind, and now a cyclist that
was passing by. Right, So he's particularly he has made
three close friends, and it has like a like a
(15:01):
I'm just like a slapstick accident, like a Keystone Cops
moment or something. Man, I would hate to be no kidding,
all right, So number three, let's move on to that one.
I like to title this one it's oh hail no
like the way I say that too. Oh hal no. Alright.
So this guy Tim Highland, I guess he's the president
(15:22):
of an insurance company called Block and Highland Incorporated. I
don't know how important that is for the story. But anyway, Um,
so he recalls a hail storm back in the nineteen
nineties that caused a well, here we go again, a
hail of a lot of damage um and insurance claims right.
So among them was one rather suspicious claim for a
heavy hail damage or heavy hail damage to a car.
(15:43):
When the adjuster inspected the damage, he was skeptical that
the hale could have actually caused these perfectly symmetrical round
divots that peppered the entire surface of the damage car.
Right away, that already tells you there's something up there.
They're exactly perfectly symmetrical. Yeah. Um, you know what hals like.
It's like a rock almost right, alright, So um Highland's
(16:03):
company reject the claim initially, and he told the claimant
that clearly the vehicle had been purposely damaged, not by hale,
but by a ball peen hammer. So this guy right
away says, I can see what's happened here. This this
car has been hit by hammer, not by hale. It's
not an act of God or you know the type
of weather. Um, this is this is something that's been
purposefully done. And you know, this guy, Highland, I'm gonna
(16:26):
read between the lines here, Ben, He probably knows that
the claimant is the one who did this to his
own vehicle to to follow file a false claim. Maybe
the paint was bad on the car. Maybe he's just
done with it because they might total the whole thing.
So alright, So Hiland figured that the client would be
so embarrassed at being caught, you know, with his obvious
attempt at insurance for a that he would simply drop
the whole matter. Instead, the guy goes and files a
(16:49):
police report claiming that an unknown assailant had beaten his
car with a ball peen hammer. So he doesn't think
that the two you know, the insurance company is going
to report that to the police, and the police department's
not gonna look into a faulty claim that he had made.
I don't understand it. So this guy, I mean when
I read this, I was like, what is what's going on?
So this is not only that the client filed a
(17:11):
new insurance claim and this time you know, saying that
you know, this has been done with the you know,
on purpose by somebody who attacked his vehicle. So this time,
because they couldn't prove that the client was the one
that inflicted the damage himself, Hiland's company. The guy who
initially busted him for this had to pay the claim.
Can you believe it's that's so backwards, that should never happen.
(17:34):
They should just some things I think they need to
look at with common sense. This is a common sense thing.
This is he's he was trying to say that, you know,
Hailed did this damage, and then it was evident that
it was Balbin hammers. We switches a story and it says, oh,
but that wasn't me, and then he gets away. Yeah, yeah,
exactly right. He got away with it, and it was
(17:54):
paid for the vehicle by the guy that busted him initially.
So how twisted is that? That's that's a big us.
That's not the best moral to walk away with. No,
I mean, it's so right. This this is wrong in
a lot of different ways, all right. So our next
tale comes to us from a guy named Ron Hetler,
and Ron remembers a claim from his very first year
(18:15):
in the business. A client of his was apparently driving
around in a pickup truck and had a shotgun writing
wait for it, shotgun. Uh, And when when the guy
got to wherever he's going, he grabs the shotgun, he
hops out the cab, he loses his grip, he discharges
the gun. He wasn't sure if he fired it while
he's grabbing for it, or if it went off by
(18:37):
itself as it hit the ground. It was loaded with buckshot,
and luckily the guy wasn't injured. But the truck's interior,
of course, is just garbage. Now. Unbelievably shot his own
interior with buckshot. So imagine that going every you know,
the windshield has done, the seat, covers, the dashboard, anything
in there is is trash, destroy everything. So the guy
(19:01):
had something called uh comprehensive or other than collision damage,
which covers a lot of really weird stuff, including shooting
your own pickup truck. You know, that's a good lesson
to learn. I guess maybe that's maybe the type of
insurances you get if your your accident pronell also don't
grab a gun in a hurry. Yeah again, well that's
(19:21):
another great lesson to learn. Who should have been taught
in the gun safety court. Yeah, apparently didn't take But man,
that's that's a terrible story too, because and if this
truly was accidental and then happened, your vehicle in a second,
like your whole car is just destroyed. I mean that
that would do so much damage inside a vehicle, it's unbelievable.
I mean you got to think about how how um
(19:44):
how awful that would be. That every surface, every single
piece of that vehicle. I mean that, like you said,
the dash, the steering wheel, if there were airbags in
the car, those are destroyed. The windshield, probably the side glass,
and this thing, the seats, everything, it's headliner, it's all gone. Now,
Can I be honest with you, This one doesn't seem
that weird to me, really, because it seems like this
(20:09):
accidental discharge of a firearm happens way more often than
one might think. I guess so. But what I'm thinking
of this one is though the heat. First of all,
he didn't injure himself for anybody else, and that's strange. Um,
but when he dropped it, when he drops it, he's
probably dropping it from my So clearly he said when
it hit the ground, it might have gone off. So
that means that it's a low angle shots that's shooting
(20:30):
up and into the truck. Um, so that's probably doing
like the most damage. I suppose, like the best angle
for damage to it to occur. Um, it's just a
it's a strange story. It does grip me as being
like um, an unusual circumstances, especially and that he didn't
shoot his own leg or something in the process. Yeah,
he lucked out on that. Yeah, very lucky. So we
have one more left. Yeah, this is a I gotta say, Ben,
(20:53):
this isn't the most unusual one to me, And I
don't know why. Maybe it's because of um all the
auto blogs and stuff that I read that sometimes sometimes
this happens. So what we're talking about is a hippie
van's long strange trip, as the author wrote. And really
it's kind of a two part tale because there's the
initial story, which started in nineteen seventy four. Um, a
(21:15):
lady named Michelle Squires of Washington. She drove her beloved
hippie van to an upholstery shop to have the fold
down bed, to have a fold down bed installed in
the back. Funny, I already find this funny. Alright, So
sometimes you gotta take a nap, yeah, I guess so.
So then the van disappears from the shop's parking lot,
(21:35):
and Squires, who of course love the van, filed a
claim with her insurance company, which was all stated at
the time, and they reimbursed her for roughly six hundred
dollars for the vehicle. That's what it was worth, six
hundred bucks. So she, you know, she gets the check
from the insurance company and everything's all done right, and yeah,
that's it, they said, that's about what I paid for
the vehicle. I've I've broken even on it. That's fine.
(21:56):
Should be the end of the story. Thirty five years later,
when you when a US Customs and Border Protection official
in Los Angeles recovered a perfectly restored, still running VW
minibus from a shipping container that was bound for the Netherlands.
They ran the vin and found that it was discovered
it was discovered that it was the same vehicle that
had been reported stolen from Squares back in nineteen seventy four.
(22:20):
So thirty five years later, this thing has found. Yet
it's in far better condition than it was initially. So
the van, which is now officially owned by all State
right because they had given her the check for six
hundred bucks back in um. They say that this this
minibus is worth about twenty five thousand dollars now at
this point. So this is a weird position to be in, right,
(22:42):
because she initially wanted her vehicle back, but she did
take the check for it, the six hundred dollar check
for it. Now she's saying that, you know, I'd still
like the vehicle back. Um, I don't know if she can,
you know, opt to give them back to her their
six hundred dollars. But they're saying, oh, no, that's not
the case. Here. We own this microbus or this minibus,
and it's worth dollars. It's ours. We bought it from you,
(23:05):
we bought the rights to it. I guess, so there's
a bit of a dispute over who owns it, you know,
her the insurance company, and um, I don't know. It's
it's an interesting tale, I guess. But what I'm saying
is that I think I've heard about this maybe three
or four times in the last three or four years,
where a cars found decades later that somebody had lost,
and you know, the story doesn't usually involve an insurance
(23:27):
company and who owns it or all that. It's usually
just kind of an oddity, you know, like you just
mentioned as Hey, by the way, this happened over in Washington,
as well, um or in California wherever that someone lost
a corvette and you know, forty years later it turns
up UM at a corvette show, you know, and they
recognize it as this person's vehicle. Somehow, It's it's distinguishable
(23:47):
other than the event, right, And we want to hear
what your weird stories are, Scott, I'll go ahead and
ask on behalf of the listeners and on behalf of Noel, Uh,
do you have any you have any weird auto stories?
You know, any la la rona, any ghost hitchhikers. No,
you know, not really, I think um. I was trying
to think of anything that that's unusual has happened to me.
(24:09):
It hasn't been like an insurance claim. I mean, it's
usually encounters with things on the road, like hitting the
lawn chair or um, you know, nearly hitting the sink,
or you know, passing by a you know, a fifty
inch television that's sitting on the side of the road
that looks like it's like a setup, like a trap
or something. You know, just unusual stuff like that. But
but nothing that I've ever had to file a claim for,
like damaged the vehicle that UM is somehow questioned by
(24:32):
the insurance company. Out of out of concerns for privacy,
I'll tell one more sort but out of concerns for privacy,
I don't. I can't be too specific, and I can't
use any names. But multiple times I had people call
me asking for legal advice. Uh, in in ways that
(24:55):
we're just in ways that we're really sad, because you know,
these sorts of calls are recorded for legal reasons. But
and people call me and say, like, uh, people call
me and say, like, man, that deer was as drunk
as I was, Or how about does you ever get
this one? Like, now, let's just take this as a hypothetical,
(25:19):
what if the car were to roll off of a pier. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
that kind of I got those. Yeah, I got um
as I was yeah, and then never mind, and then
I got my favorite was this guy called see like, uh, like,
nobody can get du out a tractor, right, which is
(25:40):
not true. You can. Yeah, you're operating a vehicle, you're
operating a motive ehicle, and really anything that you can
take on the road you can be arrested for if
you're under the influence, and that tractor qualifies, right, that
makes sense? Uh, I had people, of course like also
say a uh okay, now just between us, off the record,
(26:04):
and I like, this call is being recorded, and they're like,
off the record, Uh, if there are if there is
something illegal in a car and you know, like it
doesn't belong to you and you'll know how it got
there or anything like that, that that can't be like
on you, right, And I said, well, yeah, it's I'm
(26:26):
not a cop nor my lawyer. I can't give you
legal advice. Uh. What I can help is if you're
reporting an incident and they're like, no, you're my insurance.
You're supposed to tell me these things. And I think
you're supposed to call your lawyer at this point. Has
there been an accident? It's like, uh no, but I've
been a customer for three years, and like I, I
(26:47):
don't know if there's the right attitude. You watch one
single episode of Cops. You'll get the answer to that. Yeah, right,
one single episode. Yeah, it'll happen four times in that episode.
And with that, the vast majority. With that said, the
vast majority of people, well where we're nice, you know,
considering what they were going through. And most of the
companies that I had worked with or it seemed from
(27:08):
the other side, were you know, on the up and
up they weren't trying to retous reputable places. Yeah, they
were reputable places. Uh. So we are going to we're
going to head out. We want to hear your strangest
car stories. Yeah, and and limit these two ones that
you have actually made a claim for that where you
had to you had to explain to somebody that's how
(27:28):
this crazy situation happened. What had happened was now legally,
if it's a clown car, there's no limit on how
many people can be in there. Right now. This is
before the hippopotamus appeared before the vehicle. Right now, this
this is a strange twist. And let me walk you
back through that. Do you have a pen and paper?
(27:49):
I want you to draw this diagram. I had people
ask that too. Oh yeah, So before we head out,
we'll go ahead and read a little listener mail. Sure,
let's do it all right. So this listener mail comes
to us from uh Aaron C himself the coop UH.
And as you know, Aaron has written into us before.
(28:13):
He has occasionally sent uh I guess artwork interpretive artwork.
He wrote some Limericks earlier too, so he's writing now
I'm not gonna read all this, but he wrote in
and he said, hey, Ben, I just heard about your
new wheels on the podcast at a few thoughts on
the matter. On what your escape were we talking about
(28:34):
is just prior to the new global body style. If so,
then it should be fairly similar to the one I had.
Mine was a two thousand two though, so its non
hybrid V six four World drive model. I loved it. Unfortunately,
it was murdered by a rogue white tail a few
Christmases ago. So unfortunately he had dear huge problem, you
know in this country. He wrote in with this, and
(28:55):
he and that at that time he bought a Ford Fusion.
I think, yeah, yeah, he bought a Ford Fusion, a
blue one, a beautiful car. Yeah he uh. He said
that otherwise he'd still be happily driving the Escape to
this day. His only real complaint was that the rear
wiper was useless after a few years. And uh. The
and this was before Ford stepped up their game with interiors.
(29:17):
The door panels and dash or made of what he
likes to call tackle box plastic. And he just says,
you know, the kind you know what when he said that,
when he said, I totally get it. It's the same
kind of plastic. It's a perfect description of that. I've
never heard it described that way, and that was that
was a great way to put it. So he says.
He talks about how his dream ride has always been
(29:38):
a Mustang, specifically sixty seven to sixty eight GT. But
because of the pesky thing known as the quote unquote
real world, he had to make the hard decision to
not get the Mustang yet and switch from Ford to Chevy. Uh.
And his point, his history up to that point has
always been a Ford lineup sevente Ranger to Escape thirteen Fusion,
(30:03):
and he he said, just like you called it, Scott,
he was like, the problem is, after getting to know
and love my Fusion, there were made way too many
things in the high tech department that I felt I
didn't want to lose. When he decided he needed something
more versatile, so he felt that something new or newish
would be his best and since Ford ceased production of
(30:23):
the Ranger after two thousand and eleven, he had to
switch brands for the first time ever. Here were his options.
Ladies and gentlemen, a Tacoma, A Frontier or Colorado. So
he orders the Colorado and he says it's a winner,
extended cab two will drive Z's seventy one four cylinder
model and red Rock metallic and uh, he said he
(30:47):
likes it a lot, except he heard that Ford is
now finally considering bringing the Global Ranger to the US.
Can't win them all. I just missed it that one.
If you only had a few more well I don't
know when he bought that, but maybe a few more
months you have held off a Yeah, well, you can
never predict the future. So the Global Ranger, Global Rangers
(31:11):
coming to America, those are the rumors. Yeah, I don't
know if there's official confirmation yet. Interesting, what year is
your your escape? My escape is a two thousand and
eight eight. I'm gonna have to get used to saying
this now. I can't even put the two of you together,
the Escape and and Ben so accustomed to people don't
recognize me in it, yeah, to seeing you in the Monty.
(31:32):
I mean, it's just it's tough to get something associated
with somebody you keep wanting to go back to that.
It's just like it's weird. It's like when I meet
somebody and I see the car they drive, then in
my head, now and forever, that is the car that
they drive. And if I see another car of the
same paint color, the same model and stuff, I will
assume it as them. You can look for that person
(31:54):
driving that vehicle right right. Yeah, So so it's weird,
you know. I I also did a double take before
I saw you driving through in the v W. It's like,
what what you know? Just this happened just to two
or three days ago. You were out outside the building.
I gave a little two with the horn. I tried
to you know what, here's the thing. My other car
I was able to give like just a little a
couple of little beeps, you know, just to let somebody
(32:15):
know you're there. This one, you touch the horn and
it's loud, I mean, and it kind of shrugged my
shoulders like oh man sucked down like oh sorry about that,
because it sounded more like an angry honk than you know,
the little too too too. Uh hey I'm over here
trying away through your exactly. I felt kind of like
a jerk because I think you kind of you jumped
when I when I honked the horn you were really close.
(32:35):
I'm a jumpy guy. Yeah, I'm froggy. Yeah. It's funny
how you do kind of you get accustomed to seeing
somebody in a certain type of vehicle or talking about them,
you know, talking with them about that vehicle, and uh,
and then once they change that, it's tough too. It's
tough to adapt. So you're making it rough on me, Ben,
That's what I'm saying. You're making it rough on me
with the switch. Well, I'm glad, you know, because nothing,
(32:56):
nothing concerns me more than things. You know that, Like
I wake up sometimes in a cold sweat worried that
you might be happy. Now I'm just trying to cause
some friction. Yeah, yeah, you know what I'm gonna I'm
gonna show up one day and that Dodge DIORA. I
hope you do, because then I would, you know, I
love that. I would. I love that you would love
to see We still haven't gotten Old's opinion on that. Yeah,
(33:20):
we haven't gotten Old's opinion on that yet. Well let's
do that now. Yeah. Hey, no, no time like a brother. None.
Hey no, Hey, Bennet Scott, I've got a got a
question for you. We've got a question for you. Shoot,
So a while back, we were talking about in a
previous episode, we were talking about a vehicle called the
Dodge DOORA notice, I say vehicle, not car, not truck,
(33:43):
this vehicle. And uh, we're trying to decide whether we
as a show or for it or against it. So
we want your vote. We're at an impass. Yeah, we're
not gonna say a word either way. So this is unased.
This is on. Yeah, what just give us, like, take
a look at it and give us your an initial thoughts.
(34:05):
This is like a clown car man, what's going on here?
One of them looks like it looks like a hot wheel.
It looks like a like a weird like bastardized El Camino.
I don't understand what I'm looking at. There's two different ones,
Like one of them is very like boxy and looks
like it has like a swimming pool in the back
or something. And then the other one is like purple.
(34:26):
It looks like the Oscar Meyer wienermobile. Which one are
you guys thinking of? The first one? There's like a
it opens in the front, there's no side. I'm gonna
I'm gonna crib one of your one of your words, Ben,
it's cartoonishly stupid. Oh that's too that's to two and one,
isn't it very disappointing? Well, this is democracy and action, Scott,
(34:49):
very disappointing. So I'm I'm in the minority here on
this one. It looks like it would flip right over
front ways. Man, Oh my god. Okay, we'll see what
listeners have to think. Yeah, well, geez, thanks Doul, thanks
for stopping in. Well, we always a pleasure, always great. Hey,
but look, that was it was very democratic of us.
(35:11):
I wish it had gone the other way. I know,
I just I just wanted to close. It was the one.
I think we'll have plenty of other opportunities and grants
on the victory, and we'll see how the listeners wait
as well. Now, so we're still we're still kind of
calling the response. We're still feeling that one out. In
the meantime, check us out on Facebook and Twitter, and
if you have suggestions for an upcoming episode, we'd love
(35:33):
to hear from you. If you have reactions to what
we've been talking about here, or if you want to
just rant about the state of insurance in general. Hey, guys,
I'm there right there with you so you can contact
us directly. Our email addressing is our stuff at how
stuff work dot got so. More on this and thousands
(35:54):
of other topics is how stuff works dot com. Let
us know what you think. Send an email to podcast
It has the Horse dot momm
CarStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Scott Benjamin
Ben Bowlin
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