Ok, so here's what happened i'll start by leading into the incident with the story before it occurred.
My wife, myself, and 2 of my relatives ages 25 and 30 went fishing about 50 miles north of here. Now my wife and i don't drink....... at all. I myself used to be a delinquent and do things like getting drunk when i was underage but after turning about 18 or so i stopped and have't messed with that stuff (including other things besides alcohol). Anyhow, the two relatives got ***** faced while fishing.
Now on the way home they are still keeping the party going (still drinking) in the back seat of my jeep while i'm driving and my wife in the passenger front seat. While traveling back south toward cruces, my relatives start telling me about how they know of all these great places to go off-road and that we'd be passing by one pretty soon on our way. Me being the way i am, always up for some off-road'n, i say sure let's check it out.
So now we take the exit they are talking about and start taking this dirt road out to where they are giving me directions to. At this point it's pitch dark outside and all my jeep had at the time were it's normal headlights. Now we had stopped for a minute to drain our bladders, so when we re-enter the jeep, my wife's seatbelt gets stuck and won't come out. So one of my relatives messes with the seatbelt a little and jiggles it till it acts normal, then my wife puts it on. Now that we are on the seatbelt issue, it's worth mentioning that the two in the back voluntarily refused to wear it. I pointed out where it is to them, they said they never wear seatbelts in the backseat of vehicles. I figure, OK, they are adults, let them do what they want.
So i continue along following the directions they give me, at this point we are on another dirt road i've never been on. The road is relatively flat by jeep standards and i'm cruising at about 20-30mph on it. Next thing i know, the road right in front of me disappears and i react quickly by slamming the brakes. First the nose drops, then the back end drops, things fly around in the jeep. After the crazyness of the incident, i get out of the jeep to look around and see if i broke anything, to my amazement no tires blew, everything looks like it's there, no fluids are falling out. Then i get back into the vehicle to see if everyone is ok, my wife is cool, she's there with the first aid kit open trying to help our other passengers. They both flew off the rear seat and hit there heads against the roll bar in the jeep. One has a large gash in the middle of his head and the other has a cut just above is eye.
So now i need to get them both to the hospital, but i also need to find my way out. Luckily whenever i go off-road at night i activate my hand held GPS garmin just in case. So i use it to follow back out to the road, then i rush on the highway to get them to the hospital.
At this point i stay with them long enough for them to sign in, then i take off back home to grab another vehicle. On the way back i pick up some food in case they are hungry and to help sober them up, and then come back to the hospital. Well one of them has a severe concussion, and they both need stitches for there injuries. After the 6 hours at the hospital with only 30mins spent being treated (
) i drove them home.
Now roll a few weeks forward:
Let's start with the insurance. They see it as a liability claim but doesn't go against my record because without any vehicle damage it's not technically considered an auto accident....... go figure. They also say that based on there policies with this situation because my two passengers were not wearing a seatbelt but my wife and i were wearing and sustained no injuries then there was negligence on there part. They say that for my half of incident, they will pay part of there medical bills and no more (there words).
Now of course rumors are flying around, mostly from there end with things like that it was a terrible accident that they almost died, there was no alchohol on there part, etc. The part that really gets me is that the one who loosened my wife's seatbelt feels that i am in his debt (like he wants me to pay him) for saving my wife's life because she would've died any other way.
I've also revisited the area where the incident occurred using my GPS in broad daylight so that i can see what happened. It's basically a blind dip in the road, as you travel over a long broad crest, there's a blind 2-3 foot drop in the road. Nice flat dirt road before and after but with a drop randomly placed in it.
So i've thought about that incident a lot over the past month or two. I've at times felt like it was 100% my fault being an experienced off-roader that should have known better. But then after seeing the place in daylight, i didn't feel so bad. These guys were leading me out there with the assumption that they knew where they were going and i went over a drop in the road that was almost unavoidable in daylight much less at night.
Do you guys think that i'm more at fault then the insurance company suggests? Would some of you feel compelled to take more blame for this and pay the rest of the med bills off or did i already do the right thing?