The accident occurred on I-79 between Fairmont and Morgantown. Dan hit the deer just a few hundred yards before an exit ramp to the only State DOT weigh station for trucks anywhere on I-79 in West Virginia, and fortunately, he was able to pull in their even though the station was not operating that night.

In the initial call, I gave State Farm very clear, basic information, i.e., the highway (I-79), the nearest mile marker number (141), the location at the northbound weigh station, and my telephone number. We were told that a wrecker would be there in 45 minutes, which seemed reasonable.

So after a bit more than 45 minutes passed and no wrecker and no phone call, I called the wrecker service, which State Farm had identified. The guy at the wrecker service said they'd been contacted earlier but had told State Farm they did not have resources to respond.

So, I called State Farm back. Naturally, the call system forced me to talk to a new person. When they looked up my claim data, they had the wrong phone number (for unknown reasons, they recorded the number of my office at a place I no longer work). In that call or a subsequent call, they were confused because there was no exit 141 on I-70 in West Virginia. I explained to them that was because (a) I was on I-79, not I-70, and (b) I was at a weigh station, not a highway exit. The person I spoke to (who was in Arizona) could not understand what a weigh station is. At some point I told the person to simply call any guy with an 8th grade education who drives a wrecker in Fairmont or Morgantown and tell them to go pick up the guy at the northbound weigh station on I-79 -- anyone who met that description would know immediately where I was.

After waiting another 45 minutes or so, with no wrecker and no communication, I finally decided to drive Dan and Mark to their apartments in Morgantown. At this point, they had been sitting by the road for nearly 3 hours and it was past 1:30 a.m. I talked to State Farm again as I drove and told them if the wrecker came while I was gone, they could pay the guy to wait for me if necessary. It was about a 25 minute round trip up to Morgantown and back, and the wrecker driver was hooking up as I arrived back at the weigh station.

What I found really offensive about the experience was that the circumstances were extremely fortuitous. I had two college-age boys in the wrecked car and they were in a lighted area, away from traffic. A girl in the same situation would have been in danger. One trucker who stopped for a break approached the boys before I got there. He was a good guy, but if they had been girls and the trucker was not a good guy, who knows? If I had not been in the area to come and take charge, how much longer would the guys have been stuck out there (and again, what if they had been girls)?

Just an absolute farce and it's gone downhill from there.