Of teenage drivers, their mishaps, and car insurance

In the past three weeks, Jacob and Amber -in that order-, managed to wreck two of our four vehicles.  One of which we bought less than a month ago.  Not only wreck them, but total them.  It has been an emotionally and financially draining month.

On June 4, 2013  Jacob rolled our SUV while driving down a gravel road between my parents' old house and their new one.  He wasn't going fast, about 30-35 mph, but started to fishtail in the gravel and was unable to gain control.  The SUV flipped into a newly plowed field.  Gratefully, both Jacob and Jesse were wearing their seat belts.  The truck landed upside down and the boys could have been severely injured, but only had some stiffness the next day because the seat belts kept them from being thrown around.  Fortunately, we had sufficient insurance that our insurance company did pay us some money for the car.

Jacob did have a $47 traffic ticket that he paid a couple of days ago.  That was most of the money he had earned from odd jobs this summer.  He also had to go to the courthouse in Logan to pay it.  That was a fairly intimidating process even though the clerk who helped us was very kind.

On June 26, 2013 (exactly 3 weeks later)  Amber turned left in front of an oncoming car on her way to work in the morning.  Her little car, a very cute Honda Civic that we bought on Memorial Day, was totaled.  She wasn't hurt as the speeds involved were not not more than 25 mph. But apparently those little Japanese cars are made in such a way that a relatively minor accident for a larger car does enough damage that it would be too costly to repair the Honda Civic.  Amber has been super sad and we will go to pay her ticket on Friday.  I imagine it will be about $100 of her hard earned cash.

My financial woes do not end with the totaled cars.  My insurance premium has more than doubled due to the car craziness of the last month. Ugh.