Of the MANY aspects of American life that have changed since I last lived in the US, one of the more dramatic is the change in auto insurance.
That difference was pounded home when we had a little fender-bender in early November. A young man, rushing home, sideswiped our car as my husband was driving to the train station. I was not in the vehicle, but was told that neither car was going fast. However, the other guy was going fast enough to inflict a few thousand dollars’ worth of damage to each auto.
Fortunately, mobility was not affected. Neither driver wanted to wait hours for a policeman to show up, and the other guy had a family event to attend, so they exchanged contact information and took pictures of both vehicles and license plates and went home.
I immediately called the hotline for our auto insurance company. Let’s call it “L.” It is one of the biggies, chosen in spite of its obnoxious and ubiquitous advertising. I didn’t have to jump through robotic menus to reach a calm, well-trained live woman with a flat midwestern twang. She took down our information, walked us through our next steps, and supplied an address to send our photos and a map of the accident my husband had drawn up. She gave us the name and phone number of our “agent” — let’s call her W — who would, she said, be…
