Claims from ‘the far side’ WHEN YOU consider that ICBC handles hundreds of thousands of claims every year, it stands to reason that some of them will be a tad on the unusual side. One adjuster tells of a young man charging down a U.S. high- way shortly after dusk when his headlights caught an object on the road ahead of him. It turned out to be a small mattress from a child’s crib and, confident that it would bounce away, our motorist drove over it. About five or 10 miles later, he noticed a flickering in his rear- view mirror. The back end of his car was totally ablaze, leaving a stream of flames down the high- way. The mattress snagged underneath the vehicle and the Ken Hardie AUTOTOPIC exhaust system set it on fire. Our hero bailed out in time but his car was “‘toast.”” Then there were the t-vo travel- ers who abandoned their Delorean just north of Los Angeles when it ran out of fuel (and you thought that only happened to Michael J. Fox...). The two set out on foot to find ‘a gas station. Upon returning, they found another vehicle parked behind theirs and an individual feverishly working to relieve the Delorean of its stereo system. They managed to subdue the would-be thief for the police, who carted him off to jail. Later, a judge let the man go on his own recognizance on a promise to ap- pear at a later date and he was never seen in those parts again. ICBC adjusters in the Cariboo teil the story of a cow that devel- oped a kind of bovine ‘‘fatal at- traction” to a small red pickup. Depending on the version you hear, the cow either ran over the truck or attempted to crawl under it, inflicting a fair amount of damage in the process. Over the past five years, ICBC’s adjusters have heard tales of 3,659,000 claims ... and we still haven't “theard ‘em all.” gun»,