Well, not fully. I just broke the headlight and dented the bumper, but it still sucks. I'll tell you the story.
I was going back home from my job, which is an hour-plus commute across three highways with the car my brother and I share when at home. I get paid minimum wage, but I figured since I'm not paying room, board, or gas, and that it's pretty fun, a summer job is worth it. However, as I was pulling onto the first interstate, a woman made a quick stop at a light I didn't see, and I slammed on the breaks. I was looking over at the traffic to my left, not expected a stop light, and yet still driving the speed limit. I drove to the shoulder, and she followed. She lost some paint, and my right headlight shattered, though the bulb still works. I did step-by-step what I remember from driving school: Calmly share info with the other people, call police for a report, get out license and registration, and call insurance provider. The cop was nice and told me he's seen this many times, and should be happy I wasn't hurt. The lady also seemed relieved because her insurance covered it, as I assume did mine. All-in-all, things seemed pretty okay, although my driving anxiety was heightened again.
Then I got home. I'll sum up the consequences:
1. My nerves are forgeted, which were already bad when it came to driving.
2. I get to drive around with a beat-up looking car, which already looked bad from the massive, unfixable dent my brother put in the door.
3. I have to drive it to the shop and wait a day to see if they can repair it.
I think I deserve these things. Getting scared stuffless is probably one of the best ways to learn something, not to mention having to deal with fixing it. But I left out one consequence: I will be paying the deductible, hopefully only part of it, which is 500 USD.
Now, people with wages either non-existent or higher than mine could easily say, "You deserve this, it's a good consequence, suck it up." Well, for this next week and a half, I have to do that hour long commute across three highways just to try to not lose as much money, rather than get more to save for my future. This feels like me getting off my ass this summer and getting another job will be made essentially worthless because of a mistake all new drivers are very likely to make, and especially ones as minor as this. That's not the only reasoning though.
My brother, which sits on his ass and refuses to do any chores all day and has never had a paying job yet alone any sort of real commute, put a massive, ugly dent in the side of the car. Cost-wise, his accident is 3000x+ worse, and it was because he turned and ran into a truck, likely because of not using a turn signal as usual. I, however, was following all traffic laws, and especially after I crashed. The difference between our reaction is that my brother forgot to call the insurance company like he was supposed to, and therefore we have this dent in our door forever.
He doesn't have to pay anything. Not one god damn penny. And usually I wouldn't care about this if I weren't getting monetarily punished infinitely more than he was, for a lesser mistake and for following the law. I don't deserve to ultimately be punished for taking a difficult job with a relatively miniscule slip-up so many people do. My nerve-wracking stress is slowly being replaced by anger at having everything go to waste in such an unfair manner.
They should be deciding on what to do tonight. I can only hope my father changes her mind, else my promising job turns into one big gut-wrenching long term punishment.
TL;DR: I made a minor crash from a surprise about an unfamiliar highway's on-ramp, and am expecting a massive monetary punishment. This makes my summer job a loss, and is especially unfair since my brother with a far worse crash and no job hasn't had to pay anything.
