On 4/6/2011, my husband was hit by a deer in a rental car. This occured about 7:00 pm. After several hours on the phone with the rental company's insurance company arranging a tow, my husband's cell phone died. The insurance company called me at 10:30 p.m. saying that it was going to be an extra $111 just to give my husband a ride back to Columbia from Saluda, where the wreck occurred. Because the cell phone was dead, neither I nor the insurance company could contact my husband to tell him what was happening. I drove the hour it took to get to the scene of the accident. About 6 miles from the wreck, I saw the rental car driving very slowly down the road with hazards on and I turned around to catch my husband. He'd been in the middle of nowhere for 4 1/2 hours and didn't think anyone was coming so he was looking for a phone. Then I passed the tow truck. I called the insurance company to call the tow company and tell them to wait because we were returning to the scene. When the tow guy got there, he jumped out of the truck and began yelling for nearly two minutes about where we'd been and why we were driving a vehicle that was so wrecked it needed a tow. He wouldn't allow us to explain our story or look at the vehicle and continued to yell. I remained calm and tried to tell the driver what had happened. He wouldn't even make eye contact with me or acknowledge that I was trying to speak to him. When my husband became irate and finally said, ""This is (expletive) ridiculous,"" the driver said we needed to adjust our attitude and threatened, ""If you cuss again, I'm going to kick your ass"". We gave him the keys to the rental car and my husband said we would be talking to his supervisor. He responded that he was the owner.
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