City bus crashes into Albuquerque auto store

The vehicle that caused the crash was an AFR fire truck.

Hebert said the fire truck was driving up Second Street when it boned a city bus going down Mountain Road. The bus then veered into a fence and pierced the wall of his store, even damaging some of the vintage cars he was working on.

“Damaged the wall, damaged the whole wall that way. Damaged one of the garage doors,” he said.

Herbert said he was grateful that no one was hurt – and grateful that AFR helped him patch the hole in his apartment building.

“Well, the next problem is that the city doesn’t have insurance. So they’re self-insured. So that pretty much means, as a business owner, I have to pay for everything from my pocket, or run against my own insurance. “

“For me, this was clearly a liability incident,” said Jeanette Chavez, CABQ risk manager.

Chavez said the city was operating as an in-house insurance company. She went to the crash site after it happened – and said there was still an open claim, but things were not moving quickly.

“It takes time to put the subcontractors in place, sometimes the subcontractors are not able to get in right away and it can take longer,” she said.

“Well that’s a little frustrating. Because if the shoe was on the other foot. I know they’d expect me to have insurance. And they would expect my insurance. pay promptly for any damage I caused, if I was responsible, ”Herbert said.

In the meantime, Hébert waits for the building insurance to coordinate with the city. He expects the cost of insurance premiums to increase.

“To me, it doesn’t seem like it’s that fair. But, I guess that’s kind of how it works,” Herbert said.