As I was driving home from dropping off daughter #2, I took a variation on my usual route. Not sure why, but that is what I did. Maybe my brain said I was driving back from North Berkeley BART rather from dropping off Dani. In any case, I drove up Cedar rather than Rose. At early in the morning, most of the traffic lights are flashing rather than regular red/green cycles. Depending on the intersection, the change from night to normal happens sometime between 0500 and 0600 on weekdays. And this is a Tuesday, not a holiday.
For whatever reason, as I approached the Cedar/MLK intersection I didn’t completely register the stoplight as having changed. The end result it that a Lyft driver who was turning right interested with my right rear passenger door. No one was injured and his car, from what we could see in the dark, seemed to have only minor scratches on the front grill. Not so my Golf. After exchanging information we both headed on our way. He said he had a passenger to pick up then would check in about a police report. Just to make sure, as soon as I got home I called the non-emergency Berkeley Police Line. This is not Germany. Since no one was injured, I was told just to notify my insurance company and an official report wasn’t required. What? No ticket? No. Amazing.
Next call was to USAA. By 1000 I had dropped off my car, been picked up by the rental car agency, provided a 2018 Japanese something or other and was back home. It made me glad that I had paid the extra few dollars a month for rental car coverage.
This was not exactly how I had planned on spending my day. But it did help that the As managed to win 6:2 against the Padres.
