A Toronto woman who was left with a serious neck injury after her vehicle was struck by the driver of a getaway car following a jewelry store robbery is speaking out about a $40,000 bill she received from the city nearly two years later.
“I was actually in total shock, a complete shock. I mean, like I couldn’t believe it,” Nancy Buckman told CP24.com.
The collision happened back in December 2024 near Fairview Mall.
Buckman, a now-68 -year-old nurse practitioner, was on her way to a LifeLabs location. She started making a left-hand turn onto Fairview Mall Drive from Don Mills Road on a yellow light when “out of nowhere” she was struck by a speeding car, she says.
“The cars had stopped and I was turning left, and as I was turning left, all I remember is the actual crash, and the brakes of my cars making noise,” Buckman recalls. “There were no cars in my line of view at all.”
Buckman lost consciousness and came to when a Good Samaritan tapped on her window, imploring her to get out of the car because her vehicle’s undercarriage was on fire.
Disoriented, Buckman told her she had to get a sample to the lab.
“She says, ‘you’re not going anywhere,’” Buckman recalled.
She said the bystander helped her into the van of a family who had also stopped and let her wait there until emergency responders arrived.
She later learned that the occupants of the vehicle that hit her had allegedly been fleeing the scene of a jewelry store robbery at Fairview Mall. They fled following the crash.
Buckman’s vehicle – a 2021 Subaru Forester – was totalled. She was transported to hospital. She sustained bruising on her chest and was left with a serious neck injury that causes her ongoing pain and requires regular physiotherapy.
Insurance covered the cost of her car, as well as her ongoing physiotherapy following a second assessment. But the bills didn’t stop there.
‘I was in shock’
Fast-forward to July and Buckman received a thick envelope in the mail.
“It’s about a 10-page invoice for $40,350.11 from the City of Toronto Revenue Services,” Buckman says.
The document, which was provided to CP24.com, included a lengthy itemization of all the work and materials needed to replace a pole that had been knocked over in the crash.
Buckman received the notice in late July and was given until Aug. 22 to pay the $40,00 bill. The bill warned her that she could face court action and have her licence suspended if she didn’t pay by the deadline.
She contacted the city and told them there was “no way” she could pay the bill, especially not by the Aug. 22 deadline, which she called “unreasonable.”
The city waived the deadline but did not relent on the charge, citing a police report, which they said found her at fault because she should have yielded to the getaway driver.
“I was very angry,” Buckman says.
Buckman tried to see if she could contest the finding of fault, even reaching out to the officer who had been on scene.
“I did get a hold of him, and he claims to have actually no recollection of the accident,” Buckman says.
She reached out to several personal injury lawyers but assessed that any of the avenues available to her to pursue legal action would not be worthwhile.
After a back-and-forth with her insurance company, they agreed to pay the city’s bill in full because Buckman had been found at fault.
While she obtained the police report herself, she said it’s difficult to decipher and she’s still not quite sure how they made the determination of fault against her. She says she has been unable to reach the witnesses who were on-scene following the collision.
“It’s very insane. The whole thing is very insane,” Buckman says.
In a statement, the city said it generally recommends in such situations that the person receiving the bill forward it to their insurance company.
The copy of the bill provided to CP24.com does encourage Buckman to forward it and any supporting documentation to her insurance provider.
“We recognize this was a challenging experience for the resident,” City spokesperson Kayla Lewis wrote in an email. “When City of Toronto infrastructure is damaged in a motor vehicle collision, invoices representing the repair costs are routinely sent to vehicle owners with the recommendation that the invoice be forwarded to the vehicle’s insurer. In this case, the claim was handled by the resident’s insurance provider.”
Toronto police did not provide any further details about how Buckman was found to be at fault, but they said the alleged robbers have not been charged to date.
Because of the injury, Buckman says she has had to retire early from a 40-year career as a pioneering full-time nurse clinician in the electrophysiology program at Toronto General Hospital.
“The neck discomfort, despite getting all kinds of ergonomic assessments at my desk and stuff, really affected my neck and my work,” Buckman says. “So I actually retired March 31.”
Early retirement was a blow, she says, because she’s had a fulfilling career at UHN, where she helped establish the electrophysiology triage program. She’s since managed to go back to work one to two days per week because she misses it.
She says the ordeal “was incredibly scary” and “it’s a wonder that I ever got behind the wheel again.”
She adds she probably waits “a lot longer than most people” now before making a left-hand turn.
While she says she believes the police and the city were wrong in finding her at fault, she was the only one they could send a bill to. While the bill shocked her, she said she doesn’t plan to dwell on it.
“I just deal with stuff and move on because otherwise it affects your life,” Buckman says.
Insurance rules ‘cut and dry’
It’s not yet clear how much her premiums will go up when it comes time to renew her insurance in a couple of years.
According to Anne Marie Thomas, director of consumer and industry relations at the Insurance Bureau of Canada, insurers’ hands are mostly tied when it comes to putting up rates following an at-fault collision, even if there are extenuating circumstances such as criminality.
“I can’t imagine her (Buckman’s) frustration, but when you look at the fault determination rules for accidents in the province of Ontario, she was making the left-hand turn, so ergo she’s considered to be at fault,” Thomas says.
There’s little wiggle room, she adds, to insert additional context or reasoning.
“It is very cut and dry because insurance companies must file their underwriting rules with the financial services regulator authority,” she says.
While it’s obviously difficult to anticipate all circumstances, Thomas says there are some steps drivers can take to give themselves extra protection in a collision where they are technically deemed to be at fault.
“Companies call it many different things. It could be accident forgiveness, accident protection, something like that,” she says. “It’s sort of an agreement between you and your insurance company that if you get into an at-fault collision, your insurance rates won’t increase as a result of that incident.”
The extra feature can cost around $50 more per year, she says, though she notes some policies only make allowance for a single at-fault incident and it still becomes part of one’s driving record.
“If you have a car, check your own insurance policy to see if you do have that coverage,” Thomas says. “It can save you six years of premium increases because of that one loss.”
