2022 CX-5 Carbon totaled by drunk driver

veritas80

23' CX5 Turbo
:
SI, NY
First, No one was hurt.
Second, don't drink and drive...as if this needs to be said.

I haven't posted in a while as I got pretty used to my 22' Carbon edition. Overall, my wife and I really liked the car. Sure there were things we would like better or that we'd like to change, but it was big step up from the 19' Rogue I had. As it was leased, we figured this might be something we would buy out at the end so because of that, put about 6K down to get a more affordable payment and lower the buyout price. If we didn't end up buying it out we figured maybe picking a higher trim CX5 or CX9 with some different options.

9 months later, parked in front of my residence on 4/23, the car was hit and destroyed. My neighbors car was also totaled. The car got hit with such force that it was pushed up on the sidewalk into a utility poll 10 feet away. Cop said he suspected the guy was going about 50mph. The person responsible fled the scene on foot, leaving his car which wasn't his. He came back a few times, clearly intoxicated. At one point he offered me 200$ for the damages. Cops got there after he left for the last time (I wasn't restraining the guy and risking an assault charge) so he couldn't be breathalyzed. Again, no one was hurt including the asshole who hit me.

What has ensued over the last month has upended mine and my wife's finances significantly as my wife and I had been saving to try and buy a house. Insurance paid the value of the car out but wouldn't give me the difference in the value from what I had paid down vs the market value (About 2K). Mazda/Toyota leasing wouldn't budge on it either. I'm still waiting for my $1000 deductible back but that will take months. There was some mis-reporting from Mazda/Toyota leasing to my credit bureaus so my credit dropped like 110 points which i'm trying to dispute but so far nothing has changed. My insurance with my current company went up 17$ on the new car. I tried a quote with Geico but when they ran my license they said the accident was my fault ( I was on my couch when it happened and the car was parked legally) so they wanted an insane premium. Mind you I have no accidents, violations...nada. I asked them to explain why and they blamed DMV which doesn't prescribe fault to accidents.

My wife and I are out the 6k and the 10 payments we made to pay down the car. So we are suing in small claims court even though we've been told we won't get a dime most likely. I got told that all I was doing was "renting" the car so you're s*** out of luck. We will try anyway. We had to put the house hunting on hold and we needed a new car so out of savings goes 7500$ to finance a new CX5. We didn't want to lease again as we felt beaten by what happened. At least the equity is ours with this one.
Ended up taking delivery on Thursday of a 2023 CX5 Turbo in white and it's beautiful. The only thing I wished is for red leather as an option and the tan headliner to brighten the interior up. Otherwise its awesome. I couldn't get another Carbon as every time I see one I see the hit in my head. I'm grateful we are able to afford a new car in these hard financial times although thats 165$ more than the leased Carbon I had. However, i'm still upset about how someone can totally have no disregard for himself (he had car seats in the car but was alone) or anyone else around him or their property. He could have killed someone. Now i'm fighting with credit bureaus, damaged credit, insurance companies and claims while trying to put back $ i lost, and this guy will most likely have NOTHING happen to him and in this world, that is frustrating.

I'm a public school history teacher and pride myself on teaching my students about responsibility and accountability in historical terms. It mattered then, it matters now.

Like I said, i'm grateful no one was hurt, I'm grateful I can afford another car...but it still sucks.

Don't drive drunk, don't be an asshole.
Thanks for listening.
Vin
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Insurance paid the value of the car out but wouldn't give me the difference in the value from what I had paid down vs the market value (About 2K). Mazda/Toyota leasing wouldn't budge on it either.

I'm betting the fine print in the contract's rather specific about what constitutes compensatable "value" that the party is responsible for. Bummer, on the cash difference, though. Had you not paid that cash amount, they'd have covered the value, but since your cash altered the lease payments they're effectively altering the value compensated. Sort of.

There was some mis-reporting from Mazda/Toyota leasing to my credit bureaus so my credit dropped like 110 points ...

Huh. You're a greater financial risk due to a drunk elsewhere damaging your property, saying you were at-fault despite not being there.

I tried a quote with Geico but when they ran my license they said the accident was my fault ( I was on my couch when it happened and the car was parked legally) ...

Of course, they're relying on what "the system" says. It's apparently incorrect, though they wouldn't know that.

Plenty to be miffed about, sounds like.


Glad you and yours weren't injured. Of course, with typical drunks' good luck, he apparently didn't have a scratch. Strange, how frequently it turns out that way. Dumb, irresponsible sods.
 
Happy to hear that it happened while you were safe in your home, but holy f*ck this is frustrating. Drunk driving on its own is already really bad, but to now have to deal with all this crap because someone else thought it was a good idea to drive impaired? Not to mention the insurance companies pointing the finger at you? What a gong show.

Hope you can get everything sorted out quickly, especially the credit issues, so that you can refocus on finding your next home.
 
Unbelievable but happy to hear you're ok...Thanks for sharing your story with us and I wish you the best of luck...Please do keep us updated if possible...
 
There was some mis-reporting from Mazda/Toyota leasing to my credit bureaus so my credit dropped like 110 points which i'm trying to dispute but so far nothing has changed.
I'm so sorry this happened to your car but most importantly glad to hear that we were not hurt. Did your credit drop after you reported the accident, or was the mis-reporting happening before?

The reason I asked is that my entire adult life I have had a credit rating in the 800's. When I got my CX-5 (which I am financing), my credit score has dropped into the mid 700 range. I have never had a late payment on any bill! The only conclusion I could come to was excessive credit inquiries by Mazda/Toyota because I financed the car. The inquiries seem to happen all the time based on my credit report! I'm not sure if they are hard or soft inquiries but why in the world would there by ongoing inquiries at all especially when I always pay my bill on time?

I have been debating paying it off just so that it doesn't damage my credit score anymore. I don't think I will ever finance a car through Mazda again.
 
I'm so sorry this happened to your car but most importantly glad to hear that we were not hurt. Did your credit drop after you reported the accident, or was the mis-reporting happening before?

The reason I asked is that my entire adult life I have had a credit rating in the 800's. When I got my CX-5 (which I am financing), my credit score has dropped into the mid 700 range. I have never had a late payment on any bill! The only conclusion I could come to was excessive credit inquiries by Mazda/Toyota because I financed the car. The inquiries seem to happen all the time based on my credit report! I'm not sure if they are hard or soft inquiries but why in the world would there by ongoing inquiries at all especially when I always pay my bill on time?

I have been debating paying it off just so that it doesn't damage my credit score anymore. I don't think I will ever finance a car through Mazda again.
It only happened AFTER the accident was reported to Mazda/Toyota leasing and then their reporting to the credit bureaus. Also, all 3 are all over the place. My Equifax score is still 800. Experian is 689 and Transunion is 701 so its like, da fuq? I've been told that "hard" credit inquiries only drop your score 10 point or so and it comes back up after a while. "Soft" checks aren't supposed to do anything so I was under the impression that those things cannot impact your score significantly and to me, more than 50 points is pretty significant. Mind you I only have like 5 open accounts, a CC I pay twice a month, never late, 3 student loans which are frozen because of covid and the old Mazda lease...it HAS to be some issue with the lease account that caused the drop.

I'm also waiting now for the totaled car lease to come off the reports and the new financed car to go on which should be happening any day now.

Whatever it is, it's bulls***.
 
When I got my CX-50 in December, the dealership pulled my credit TWICE within a few minutes. Don't know why (probably one guy didn't talk to another) but it only dropped my score by about 3 points.
 
I'm so sorry this happened to your car but most importantly glad to hear that we were not hurt. Did your credit drop after you reported the accident, or was the mis-reporting happening before?

The reason I asked is that my entire adult life I have had a credit rating in the 800's. When I got my CX-5 (which I am financing), my credit score has dropped into the mid 700 range. I have never had a late payment on any bill! The only conclusion I could come to was excessive credit inquiries by Mazda/Toyota because I financed the car. The inquiries seem to happen all the time based on my credit report! I'm not sure if they are hard or soft inquiries but why in the world would there by ongoing inquiries at all especially when I always pay my bill on time?

I have been debating paying it off just so that it doesn't damage my credit score anymore. I don't think I will ever finance a car through Mazda again.
 
While it has nothing to do with car loans, the link is not accurate regarding revolving credit. Contrary to the link, any utilization of more than 10% of your revolving credit aggregate limits will negatively impact your credit rating. Credit Karma makes note of this. And I see it all the time--one month over 10% by a bit and my credit rating goes down 10 points then back up the next month if under 10%. 29%? It would be more than 10 points to be sure. And it doesn't matter that I pay the credit cards on time and in full every month and have done so for 20 years--the credit agencies just take a snapshot once a month for the balances on that particular day.
 
While it has nothing to do with car loans, the link is not accurate regarding revolving credit. Contrary to the link, any utilization of more than 10% of your revolving credit aggregate limits will negatively impact your credit rating. Credit Karma makes note of this. And I see it all the time--one month over 10% by a bit and my credit rating goes down 10 points then back up the next month if under 10%. 29%? It would be more than 10 points to be sure. And it doesn't matter that I pay the credit cards on time and in full every month and have done so for 20 years--the credit agencies just take a snapshot once a month for the balances on that particular day.
I should have mentioned that I don't specifically vouch for the information, and may not have read it all. It seemed to give a plausible accounting of the various things that affect credit related to financing a car.

I've been out of the credit score fray for a long time. In our house for more than a decade, and generally avoid using credit other than credit cards for which the balance is paid off monthly.

I do occasionally look at my credit score out of curiosity, and it does fluctuate 10 or 20 points or so. The biggest change was when I let Citibank cancel my longest standing credit card because I didn't affirmatively accept their change of the terms of service.
 
I should have mentioned that I don't specifically vouch for the information, and may not have read it all. It seemed to give a plausible accounting of the various things that affect credit related to financing a car.

I've been out of the credit score fray for a long time. In our house for more than a decade, and generally avoid using credit other than credit cards for which the balance is paid off monthly.

I do occasionally look at my credit score out of curiosity, and it does fluctuate 10 or 20 points or so. The biggest change was when I let Citibank cancel my longest standing credit card because I didn't affirmatively accept their change of the terms of service.
I have not borrowed money for anything, including houses and cars, for 20 years except when Toyota offered 0% financing once upon a time. But I do check Credit Karma once a month for fraudulent activity--hard inquiries or a new account I did not open. No baddies in those regards so far. In the process you couldn't help noticing what goes on with the credit rating though I don't anticipate ever needing to use that 800 rating except maybe some attractive offer to "qualified buyers". Even then, 720+ is usually all you need.

The dip in rating when you dumped the Citibank card might have been because it was your oldest or the percentage of aggregate outstanding revolving credit as a percentage of aggregate credit limits went up as alluded to earlier. Or a combination of the two.

Car loans and home mortgages are a whole other matter--those a loans are collateralized, subject to repo or foreclosure. The main consideration with those is history of on-time payment.

One thing is for sure--if you get a cash back card or a card with credit toward travel expenses or some other card with usable freebies and you pay off the balance every month it's one of the few instances of free money in this life, along with buying out a vehicle lease that was written pre-pandemic. ;)
 
I have not borrowed money for anything, including houses and cars, for 20 years except when Toyota offered 0% financing once upon a time. But I do check Credit Karma once a month for fraudulent activity--hard inquiries or a new account I did not open. No baddies in those regards so far. In the process you couldn't help noticing what goes on with the credit rating though I don't anticipate ever needing to use that 800 rating except maybe some attractive offer to "qualified buyers". Even then, 720+ is usually all you need.
If you have not borrowed money for 20 yrs then you should put a hold on all three credit reporting agencies so nobody can access your accounts. That way nobody can take a loan out in your name or open a credit card account.
 
If you have not borrowed money for 20 yrs then you should put a hold on all three credit reporting agencies so nobody can access your accounts. That way nobody can take a loan out in your name or open a credit card account.
That's actually a sound bit of advice.
 
its actually 4 credit bureaus but the 4th is not widely known. Freeze is good option and its free.
You can unfreeze temporarily if you want to apply for loan the freeze again.
 
Hey guys, just wanted to say thanks for the kind words and exchange of information...all is welcome and appreciated. Nothing to new report as i'm waiting for my credit reports to update after the old car comes off the remaining two and the new loan for the new car goes on all three.
Trying to enjoy the car for now.
If I have any updates, I'll be sure to share.
Best,
Vin
 
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