Insurance stories

[Simon Lord]

Loved the house painting story. My favourite insurance one dates back to about
1968 in Scotland. We used to live on a rather interesting double bend on an
unrestricted section of road. Part of the bend had an adverse camber, and the
result was that on particularly wet or slippery nights if you looked out of
the window for long enough you could usually see at least one person get out
of line. The best time was when the RAC Rally used the road as part of its
route between stages...

Anyway, one particularly cold night we heard a car going into the bend far too
fast followed by the usual 'thud'. We were on our way out to help when we
heard a second 'thud'. The sight that met our eyes was an unusual one. The
first car had hit a telegraph pole, not particularly hard judging by the car
but at just the right angle and in just the right degree of cold to have made
the pole brittle. It had actually snapped off and, as the wires from which it
was hung traversed the road at that point, swung across the road. The lady
coming in the opposite direction, at a sensible speed, was therefore faced
with the possibly unique situation of having a telegraph pole swing out and
hit her. Nobody was seriously injured but she took, as you might imagine, some
calming down. I seem to recall that her insurance company later contacted my
father for verification...

Simon