Car crunch

Got rear-ended by a pickup truck on saturday, on 16 ave. Which pushed me into the car in front. It sucked to be the meat in a GMC-Chrysler bun.

Overall i was quite calmly accepting of the situation, wasn't really angry or that upset or anything, guess i just felt that it happened and that's that. No big emotions. Other people were quite good about it too. There was a firetruck at the scene already, so they checked that we were all okay, and called dispatch to send a police car, etc.

The fire truck was at the left side of the road, partially in the left lane (maybe block 1/3 of that lane). We were all in center lane. Light turned amber, car in front stopped quickly, I had to stop quite quickly too. Truck behind me wasn't paying attention to us, because he was paying attention to van in left lane which apparently wanted to pass the fire truck without properly changing lanes, just swerve partially into our centre lane a bit, where the truck behind me was. I can't verify that, but sounds right, especially since I had seen that van there a moment earlier, but it managed to disappear from the scene. (even worse considering the light was surely red by that time.)

I get $115 ticket for "fail to ascertain sufficient space for movement." When you stop at an intersection, you must leave enough space between you and the car in front to allow for being smoked from behind without sliding into them. When the policewoman was saying so, I pointed to the line ups of cars at the intersection and said "not a single one is leaving that much space!" and she said "yeah, well, I could give them all a ticket." Yeah, could, but wouldn't. I also oppose the ticket because actually there's no damage to the front of my car or rear of the car in front, which to me indicates I left sufficient space that despite getting my ass kicked, I managed not to damage the car in front.

Got my car estimate from the body shop. Estimate is about $5300 on the rear of the car. Because the trunk won't securely close, the car's deemed undrivable so I'm in a rental till they decide what to do. The insurance might call it a write-off. Hope not, as I imagine their book values are well under reality values. From "Auto Trader", same model car with many more kms than mine go for $8000-$9000. Write off also probably ignores the many hours of research and shopping you have to do, and costs of inspections on potential replacement vehicles.