Its post first blizzard 2014 in New York. Wife goes to work during the week and is on call to work during the weekend, needing to leave the house at 7AM. When she comes home Sunday at 12PM, she drives down the hill towards the garage, makes her turn to enter into her spot of the two car garage and BAMM, hits the left corner edge of the garage, causing severe damage to the cinder block of the foundation.
How did this happen? Ice on the driveway.
The car is fine. The garage is not, view pix.
Luckily wifey called a guy, who helped push part of the garage door rail back into alignment so that at the very least the automatic door could be closed. Hubby states its 100% wifey fault as wifey could have missed the garage by turning the wheels out of the way.
However, hubby has never parked wifey’s car into this garage (or the previous garage – wife always gets the spot that is more challenging to pull into, despite the car being 2 sizes bigger, go fig) and wifey is not prepared to take driving lessons from someone that cannot drive a meaningful distance in reverse without having to put it back in drive to realign oneself. Who drives a mini sport with an automatic transmission? Hubby parks his car straight in from the driveway. Wifey on the other hand has to turn to the left to then align onself to pull straight into the garage.
Hubby perseverated the past days about ensuring the driveway would not develop ice. But alas, he has to fulfill his ‘do nothing Sunday’. Wifey admits to 90% of the blame to take. But now wifey thinks this is inappropriately disproportionate.
The question is and the newlyweds need a verdict: what percentage of fault do wifey and hubby each have?
Well, I guess since wifey was doing the driving, some blame must be assessed to her. But wifey points out some extenuating circumstances, so perhaps some blame goes to hubby. But hubby has not had a chance to respond to wifey’s claims, so it really isn’t possible to decide. King Solomon of the ancient world might decide the fair thing is to cut the car in two, give one half to wifey to drive, one half to hubby to drive, but I don’t see how that would help in this situation.
So my advice is to consider this a minor incident, something more or less impossible to have anticipated as you never now what will happen when the wheels hit ice. It’s only a few bricks.
I should admit some personal bias here. As a teenager I backed my 61 Ford galaxy out the driveway and the edge of the bumper hit the edge of the garage opening and bent a piece of metal. My solution was to hammer it back into shape. Maybe you two could chip in and invest in a big hammer?
The driver is 100% responsible here. Extenuating circumstances do not alleviate the responsibility. Allow me to address hubby here for a second and repeat the question asked to another hubby on the show once, “which is more important to you, to be right, or to be happy?”
@Ro:
You’re looking for a very near sighted answer here of laying blame. That approach can cost you dearly, maybe not now, but it will eventually.
If it were me, I’d take the wife out to dinner, tell her how happy you are that she’s OK, that you two will get through any financial setback the accident may bring, and then enjoy the evening together.
As newlyweds, they are both 100% at fault. The wife for driving into the wall and the husband for making her manuever into a tighter spot. Repairing the block will be a nice Spring project for him. They’re going to have to stop this silly blame game if the marriage is going to last. See how much damage backing through the closed garage door causes compared to a little block work.
Who cares. If you two are newlyweds you’re going to have a rough time of it if everything bad that happens requires “blame.” Crap happens in life. Finding blame is backward looking and caustic. Fix the dumb garage and move on.
And for gosh sakes, get off the “hubby” “wifey” talk. It’s not cute. It just gave me a headache.
I thought you always win if you get to present only YOUR side of the story. Probably not the case here.
I am sure there is more to why you get to park where you park your car. If you could not maneuver it in, then you probably you could stop, but you didn’t, and I am sure that had a reason too.
There are marriage counselors, they get paid to listen to these stories. Never could afford to go to one to see what the end result is. They just keep asking questions until some where someone gives in I guess.
Now you both “man” up and take responsibility for this minor accident. You were the operator of a machine and caused the accident. YOur husband could have helped by skipping Sunday Football and clearing the driveway or maybe moving his car.
If you can not handle this, then rethink having kids, things would just get worse.
Who is responsible for the wife sliding into anything ? The adult is. . If running into cars is a perpetual problem when ice is involved, everyone is equally responsible. Leave some sand at the head of the drive and your ice grippers in the car. Get out and sand the drive with a couple of sprinkles. It’s cheaper then banging into cars and garages.
Backing a camper into a garage door is not always a sign of insufficient skills. I find moving boats in to garage is so difficult because of the different lighting outside and in, when you get near the garage it’s nealy impossible to judge distances you can do easily in the light. My solution was to mount a reciever hitch on the front of my truck to get more control and turn headlights and every light I could find, on. And later, I mounted a hitch on the bucket of my tractor to make difficult trailer moving jobs much easier. Having the turning wheels nearer the hitch is the key. That’s fifth wheel hitches are much to control backing up then hitches behind the rear wheels.
I’d give her the benefit of the doubt–since this is apparently the first time she’s hit anything, and with ice on the driveway, what do you want? $#-t happens as we all know. Do you want her to rag on you if you make a mistake? We all have “insufficient skills” after a long hard day when luck isn’t on our side.
As a divorced and now long term married guy, you just gotta let the blame game go, nobody was hurt, you have to fix the cinder block either way. Do not set the stage of watching and waiting to snipe. A hug and stuff happens hopefully will make you both feel great and payback hopefully will be a similar response for you in the future on your next mistake.
If the OP is intent about focusing on “blame” every time that an unfortunate incident occurs, I predict that his marriage will not be a long one, or–at the very least–will be a very unhappy one.
Why is it necessary to assign blame? Is this a marriage, or is it a business relationship?
Is there any love involved, or is life just a series of contractual events for him?
I think she should sue the manufacturer who made too wide a car, the salesperson who sold her too wide a car and whoever built too narrow a garage. I don’t get all the defensiveness about fault . If either my wife or I hit something, the one who was driving feels bad, the other one reassures them and says “be glad no one was hurt” . Of course we are grownups.
