Why you don't want to have an accident in Costa Rica!

More often than not in Costa Rica you run into special circumstances where police and money are involved. Almost all these circumstances leave you in a rather uncomfortable position trying to figure out what on earth is going on and whether or not you’re about to be taken for a ride.

Recently someone I know had a pretty bad accident where to sum up, his car was a write off, his ankle was gashed, he damaged government property and his state of sobriety was questionable. Sounds like a wonderful position to be in, doesn't it?

Lucky for him there were some local police officers driving by at the time of the accident and helped him get out of the wreckage. The local police called the Red Cross and then the transit police who arrived relatively quickly. The transito ("transit police") quickly got a friend who spoke some broken English on the phone so they could communicate.

One would naturally think that they are talking to this guy about the accident and getting the details for the report, wooah yeah right… intimidation would be the right word to sum it up. They were pressuring him about the severity of the situation and suggesting a pay-off so that they wouldn’t take his car and he could avoid the "sobriety" test (the breathalyzer) which if failed would void his insurance.

It didn't take long for the situation to get worst with Tow Trucks showing up demanding payment to get the car out. The local police had stuck around to keep an eye on everything and decided when they saw things getting worse to take him home (only a couple blocks away) to call someone who spoke Spanish, who happened to be one of his co-workers and myself.

I reach his home within a few minutes and we quickly return to the scene and before we get out of the car we go over some details like if he had insurance or if he had anything to drink. So as we get out of the car I'm under the impression that he has insurance and he had only drank 2 beers. I didn't question the drinks because he seemed fine to me.

Of course everyone starts in on us right away once we arrive. I manage to get the Transito off to one side so we could discuss the details of the accident. He tries the good old crap that he was trying on my buddy which he quickly realized wasn't having much effect in-fact the best crap he could come up with is that we needed to get the car out of the ditch in the middle of the road so that no one else would get killed or hurt, which I responded to by telling him if he was so concerned about someone getting killed he should move his vehicle to where the accident was and turn his lights on so people can see there is a problem. Of course he felt that his car being on the other side of the road was good enough. This was only to try and exaggerate the problem to get a "higher" bribe.

I call the Insurance Company (INS) to report the accident which the Transito was telling me wasn't necessary but the laws in Costa Rica require that you call the INS and the Transitos when there is an accident so that insurance will take photos, etc.

In the meantime my buddy's co-worker shows up and I finish on the phone with INS. We fill him in on what's happening and the Transito comes over and says he doesn't want to talk to me anymore and he only wants to talk to the co-worker. Well that's fine with me, the co-worker agrees to pay the Transito 120,000 colones (about $220) which was the amount the Transito was requesting to "avoid" the sobriety test and not in pound the car. Basically the payoff range is between 5,000 and 20,000 colones for almost anything, so this Transito was taking advantage of the fact that our buddy was not a local.

Well things had to move quite quickly since INS was on their way and we didn’t want anything to "seem" suspicious. We got the car pulled out of the ditch off to the side of the road which was also ridiculously priced at $120 considering it was a 5 min job but we were in a tight spot so what were we going to do.

The INS inspector came the Transito told him that he did see the need for a sobriety test and that we just wanted to finish so we could get him into the hospital. So the inspector said no problem took pictures of the car and told us we could go. So I take my buddy to the hospital (coincidently right across the street) to get his ankle looked at since it was bleeding quite severely.

About 20 min later my buddy's co-worker joins us in the hospital and tells us that he didn't pay the Transito the 120,000 colones because he was told by the local police that he didn't deserve it. I laughed since it really seemed like justice, since the Transito was really trying to rip him off.

Inside the hospital waiting for the Tow Truck to show up and keeping my buddy company the co-worker tells me that the tow truck is waiting for me outside. So I go out to check on things. No tow truck was there just the crashed car the local police and the Transito. The Transito should have left after the inspector since nothing was left for him to do, but he wanted the 120,000 that the co-worker agreed to pay him.

The Transito wonders over and asks me about the co-worker and I tell him that I don't know what happened to him and suggested that he must have gone home since I didn't see him in the hospital and the second Einstein comment comes out by saying "So what you left him in there all alone?" and I reply by reminding him that my buddy is in there with Doctors I would think that he's in good hands. Since he didn't want to talk to me in the first place I told him I didn't know what to say but next time he might want to consider who he makes a deal with.

As soon as the Tow Truck arrives and we get the car hooked up and back to my buddies house. I gave the local police a small but fair tip for sticking around and helping keeping things under control. They were happy and I got back to my buddy in the Hospital who had gashed his ankle to the muscle so they gave him some stitches. So finally 5 hours later I got my buddy home. The next day we reviewed his insurance papers and realized that his insurance had expired 2 weeks ago and was not going to be covered for this accident. Expensive lesson for him but hopefully we have all learned from his mistake!