Chasing Cars

I was sitting in front of the computer screen minding someone else's business, when the mobile rang.

""Insurethebox" (my car insurance company) here, are you alright?"

I automatically said "Yes".

The delightfully northern female voice explained "Our system has registered an incident in Grove Road; were you involved in an accident?" I now understood.

"No, I'm fine; just went up on the curb, I keep forgetting the little black box in the car."

"As long as you're OK, sir. Have a nice evening." And with that she rang off.

We'd taken GinjatheNinja to the vet. The poor little mutt had been in a fight and ended up on the wrong end of a pretty serious beating. Both his ears were blooded, his head had been badly scratched and his side was sore. He had been well and truly thumped cat style.

This has happened sometime on Saturday night/Sunday morning. He spent the rest of Sunday on our bed, asleep and feeling extremely sorry for himself. Monday he also slept and in the evening the missus and I decided that a trip to the vet was in order.

Fifteen minutes later we managed to get the cat, two towels and a blanket into the cat basket. A dash to the vet and two injections just in case, later saw the three of us back in the car. Except so distracted was I by Ginja's plight I missed the road and mounted the payment as we left the vet. Which lead to the call from my insurer.

After the call I began thinking about the people who phone you up after you've triggered the insurer's alarm system.

In my case, it was nothing, but what if one of the cars involved  the recent horrific M5 accident had a black box in it? I suspect the resulting rapid deceleration recorded by the instrument would alert the system to the possibility that a serious incident may have occurred. Even so it must be pretty unnerving making that call knowing that you could be speaking to someone who's been seriously injured or involved in a fatal crash.

What must they think if the phone goes unanswered?