A Little Bump in the Road...

As Brandon was coming home from one of his last classes as an undergrad, he had what we like to call "an incident."  He was parallel parked on a dark street, and when he went to pull out (after looking in his mirror and checking for any oncoming traffic), he heard a crunch.  He looked out his window and saw a bike, which immediately put him into panic mode.  Apparently a girl had been riding her bike down the street, and she slammed right into the side of Brandon's car.  So, the police were called, the ambulance came, and it was determined that the girl and her bike were fine, but Brandon was cited for "leaving the curb."  The police were fairly sympathetic to the whole situation because it seemed like all parties involved weren't really at fault, but Brandon was still fined.  $125.  Right before Christmas.  Ug.  I'm not going into too many details because I don't know what's going on insurance-wise.  Over the next week or two after the "incident," Brandon was contacted by various people (including ambulance chasers) because the girl ended up going to the ER and submitted claims for her medical bills and for damage to her bike.  The good news is that according to the ER and a specialist, she's just as okay as she was at the scene.  The bad news is that she went to the ER and a specialist to confirm this and now it's been submitted to our insurance.  And we still haven't been told what damage was done to the bike.  Our car, however, has several dents in the side of it.  And multiple claims been reported to our insurance.  And Brandon was fined $125.  The good news about that is that Brandon actually went to court to plea no contest to the situation, and the judge agreed with him that it was a fairly ridiculous situation, and he reduced his fine to $5.  Unfortunately we still have to pay $104 in court costs, so we still have to pay $109...but that's less than $125!