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A family in the East Bay area of Northern California received two shocks when they found their car smashed up in front of their home. Checking their home surveillance footage, they had the evidence right in front of them: the USPS carrier crashed a mail truck right into their vehicle, then took off.
Tesla hits a deer without even slowing down.
At first the father didn’t believe his teenage son when he called at work to explain the Volkswagen Jetta mysteriously had rear-end damage. The dad just figured the kid didn’t want to fess up to crashing into something or someone.
But the surveillance footage cleared up any confusion rapidly. In it, which was shared by ABC7 News, you can see the USPS driver standing on the sidewalk, back turned to the mail truck which starts creeping forward.
We’re assuming the mail carrier left the transmission in drive and didn’t realize it. Seeing the truck rolling forward slowly, the USPS employee jumps inside and that’s when the vehicle surges forward, we’re guessing because the driver accidentally stomped on the accelerator, not the brake pedal.
As the USPS truck hits the VW, the driver has his one leg hanging out of the open door, his foot almost touching the sidewalk. It’s such an odd scenario but not too dissimilar to drivers accidentally rolling their cars forward while leaning to feed a parking voucher into a machine.
While these mistakes happen, what people usually do is stay at the scene of the crash and take accountability. But the mail carrier instead took off.
Even more shocking, while a USPS employee responded to the family’s house and took pictures of the damaged car, the government agency went silent afterwards. Frustrated, the dad in an interview said he contacted the postmaster’s office and was told to get two estimates for the damage, but after sending those in he heard nothing, again.
Finally, he was able to get a response that it supposedly was going to take six to nine months to cover the damage. What was outrageous about that was the crash bent the Jetta’s frame, totaling it. His insurance payout wasn’t enough to truly replace the car, so he had to buy an older model while USPS once again ignored him.
Thankfully ABC7 News leaned on USPS, which made excuses about the father not filling out the correct form, a favorite technique of deflection used by beaurocrats. What’s great about all of this is if a regular citizen had done the same thing, police would’ve been involved and the consequences likely would’ve been severe, but for whatever reason the father didn’t want to go that route. While the news station was able to get the father a check from USPS, the report mentions the driver involved in the incident retired immediately.
Image via ABC7 News Bay Area
