Addendum to "Too Old for an Accident?"

Yesterday, I did a little post here about how an insurance company (from whom we'd bought an accident policy a couple of decades ago) notified me the other day, via snail-mail, that since I had recently turned 75, I was no longer eligible for the coverage. A nice-knowing-you kind of letter.

I remarked to Joyce that it's ironic that they covered us during the years we were driving all over the country--but not now that we drive only all over the county.

And yet ...

We have had very few car accidents in our lives, and not one was our fault. Well, one is questionable. I-80 near Iowa City, ice storm, couldn't stop, joined a big pile-up in, oh 1971 or so. No injuries. Minor car damage.

Since then (I'm not sure of the chronological order) we've had several:

• On three different occasions (three different drivers, three different years) someone from our across-the-street neighbor's drive has backed out and hit our car (three different cars), parked right in front of our house. (We no longer park there--took only three hits to convince us.)
• Once, a few years ago, we were sitting at a stoplight--Fishcreek R. and Rt. 91 in Stow, less than three miles away from our house--when a car, hit by another car out on 91, spun into us. Broke Joyce's sternum.
• Last year, less than a block from our house, a guy approaching the intersection from our left neglected to stop at a four-way stop and T-boned us out in the intersection. Totaled our car. Bruises for Joyce and me.

So ... maybe those insurance companies know something?

As I now know something--or, rather, have had something once again confirmed: Insurance companies are interested in profit, not in protection.

One quick story. In 1990 when Joyce was selling her parents' house in Firestone Park in Akron (her father had died; her mother was in an Alzheimer's unit), a squirrel fell down the chimney into the basement and proceeded to wreak havoc down there.

Joyce's father had dutifully paid his premiums for decades.

But--as the agent (feigning sorrow) informed us--a squirrel is, you know, a rodent--and the policy excluded rodent damage. So sorry about that ...

Yeah.