Yet more accident news (or, "I would sell my life story as a soap opera, but no-one would believe it")

I went to the police station yesterday to get a copy of the accident report. Things started going downhill fairly rapidly; here's a somewhat shortened version of the conversation I had with the secretary behind the desk at the accidents desk:

Me: "I'd like a copy of accident number xx-yyyyyy please."
Secretary: "Sure, let me just pull it up on the system here... Hmmm, it's not here. Let me just go and check in the back to see if it's on file there."

After a couple of minutes digging around, she came back.

S: "I can't find it. Are you sure that's the right number? I've got xx-yyyyzy on the system, though, is that it?"
Me: "It's the number that the police officer at the scene gave me."

After discussing what happened, she finally managed to get a hit from the license plate number of the driver.

S: "OK, here we are. So, it's a hit and run in Upper Sackville and you were driving a Honda Civic?"
Me: "Er, no, I was driving a bicycle and was hit at South Park and Morris by a Buick Le Sabre."
S: "Oh... it says here you were driving a Honda Civic in Sackville, and you were hit crossing South Park and Morris on a bicycle by a Buick... oh. This is all wrong, isn't it?"
Me: "Er, yes. I don't know what happened, but I definitely wasn't in Sackville."
S: "Well, it looks like the original report got sent over to the RCMP in Sackville, because Sackville isn't in our jurisdiction. I can call them and see if it's there if you want?"
Me: "Sure, that'd be great."

So, she called up, and left a message, and came back and said:

S: "I left a message, I don't know if they'll call back soon or not. If you want to try waiting there's a bench over there."

Rather an odd way of putting it, but I thought I'd give it a try. After 20 minutes I decided not to waste any more time and told them I had to leave and left my number. I was told to email the officers concerned, and got their details. I emailed them when I got back to the office, and didn't think anything more of it.

This morning, I got a call from the receptionist. I went up and picked up a copy of the accident report. The text was quite definitely not what I was expecting, and I'll quote it verbatim:

"Both veh & bicycle Northbound on south park street. Bicycle was bumped by vehicle. No injury, no damage, no witnesses. Unclear who was @ fault, cyclest did not wish further action"

This is rather interesting as it's quite definitely not what the officer I talked to told me. However, there is a diagram that has the lane positioning, and it shows the driver was over towards the right hand side (although not as far as he looked to me). That given, it makes no sense for him to be that far over, since he would have to meander to the left instead of going straight across, so hopefully that's a bonus point in my favour.

I also got a copy of the statement I gave to the claims adjuster. It reads like some stream of consciousness drivel from a mentally ill patient who has no concept of the passage of time. Here's a sample snippet:

"When I fell to the pavement I put my left hand out to break my fall and ended up rolling over coming to rest on my right side. I was wearing a helmet. I didn’t strike my head. I scuffed up my right knee; I have a bruised right hip as well. I had a few scratches to my left hand. I called the HRM Police on my cell phone and they came to the accident scene. I was able to get up off the pavement on my own. I told the police what had happened. The police officer that I spoke to told me that the driver of the car was at fault, based on what I had told him and what the other officer was told by the driver of the car. I don’t know if the driver of the car received a ticket, I left the accident scene while they were still talking to the driver of the car. I had my bike looked at by Ideal Bikes on Barrington Street yesterday and there is $394.34 damage to the bike as quoted by Ideal Bikes. The handle bar tape was scuffed up, break pads damaged, handle bars were bent in on the right hand side, the rear derailleur was damaged, right hand petal and the leather seat was damaged. I rode my bike to the office and when I got there I started to get more pain in my left hand."

I'm going to be spending the evening rewriting it into something a touch more coherent, I think...

I stopped in at Ideal Bikes at lunchtime to pick up some more handlebar tape to make my hybrid bike easier to ride. Dave suggested putting an ad in The Coast, a local paper, looking for witnesses - apparently people have done that with some success in the past.

4 more days till I can ride my bike again. This still sucks.