Thanks for all the kind comments.
I have pretty well recovered from the crashes, but my wife's knee is still acting up and has to see the doctor again, but all in all we were very lucky.
I want to warn everybody that the maintenance of roads is being compromised because of budget cuts in many cities. The puddle that caused our problems was deep enough to be 1.5 lanes wide and probably 4-6 inches deep along the barrier wall. It wasn't raining hard at the time so it was caused by not keeping the catch basin or the storm sewer cleaned. These things need to be cleaned out every 3-5 years. It is a simple thing for some budget director to stretch the intervals to reduce costs. SO - be very careful driving in the rain in American cities especially at night. It doesn't matter if you have really good tires if you hit 5 inches of water at 90 kph - you will hydroplane and you might very well lose control.
I am still waiting for RBC to make a determination on my car, but I don't want it back after this. The body shop says that they will have to graft the entire back end of a donor car to repair it, and I am frankly not interested. The clip costs $5,000 plus shipping from New York state. I heard from somebody that RBC will repair for up to 70% of value and that some other companies use 50%. I will have no problem going to my lawyer if they become difficult because I don't owe anything on the car and can buy another one without needing their check immediately. I would like to hear from anybody who has experience with this issue.
I called RBC the morning after the accident to report it and was on hold for 5 minutes and got an overflow call centre. I gave them all the details, but they couldn't tell me my policy details regarding rental cars. I called around Windsor, but found the supply of rental cars to be very tight. I took a Cadillac SRV which costs $95 per day. It is a very well put together car with very high quality materials and drives quite well for an CUV. My complaints are the rear visibility is very poor and that it is underpowered with it's 3L engine. It handles much better than a Ford Edge in my opinion. I exchanged it for something smaller as my policy limits are $50 per day to a maximum of $1,500 and it is going to be a while before this is all resolved.
Stay tuned.
