Trapped in Your Car After a DeKalb Wreck? $250 Please.
Decatur Metro | December 28, 2009“$250?! I’ll extricate myself thank you very much. Uh…could you give me a hand?”
From the AJC…
The county has adopted a $250 fee for anyone who must be cut from a crash by the county’s Fire Rescue Department. The service had been free.
The county projects making $750,000 on this new fee, which means it’s projecting around 3,000 nasty car wrecks next year.
Do you have to pay upfront? Or will they cut you out so the paramedics can save you?
Sounds like a way to bilk money from insurance companies…not that there’s anything wrong with that.
But you get $180 of that back under Cash for Clunkers…
With the budgets under pressure, I would be hesitant to get into any fender bender in Dekalb County. I can see it now:
“No, NO, STOP, I can open the door!!!. Get that saw away from my car!”
Insert Tiger Woods joke here:
Seriously though, it’s a good thing I keep nail clippers in the glove box.
I’m sure they’re expecting the number of big car wrecks to go up with the introduction of the super speeder law, and the concomitant increase in the speed delta between drivers scared of getting tickets and those driving reasonable speeds. Revenue opportunities abound!
Well, might I suggest either the counties themselves or the GSP start enforcing the “ILLEGAL TO CROSS DOUBLE WHITE LINES” on the HOV lanes around town if ticket revenue is needed. They would have a fortune in short order.
These “a la carte” emergency services harken back to the first fire brigades. Private companies (protection rackets) created to protect member merchants from fires. If you didn’t have the right fire company badge on your store, it burned. Unless you coughed up the membership fee on the spot. Seems we are moving backwards.
What if you are concious and insist they not cut the car open? If you have a suspected head or neck injury, they will cut your roof off anyway. How is that an enforcable private contract?
Then there’s the story I read of the UK cabbie who let an injured accident victim sit in his undamaged cab after a multicar pileup. The fire brigade arrived and wouldn’t let the passenger step out under their own power. Instead they cut the cab to pieces. Probably charged the cab operator for the priviledge.