kevinkar
Drag Racing Champion
- Location
- United States
So I had to take an emergency trip up to the SF Bay Area (sudden death in the family) and, while I was up there on the 101 north of the Golden Gate Bridge, one exit away from the one I was going to take, I got rear-ended by a driver who said she was "spaced out due to the traffic" which was odd since it was STOP-AND-GO!!! You kinda have to be paying attention so you can go and stop and go and stop... Ugh. My guess is that, since we were just at an exit and the right hand lane had emptied a bit, she must have thought it opened up and sped up only to find my car stopped in front of her. Wham!
It felt like she really rammed into me and I expected to see the whole back end smashed in but when I got out, it looked like this:
I was stunned that it didn't look damaged. Upon closer inspection, the left side of the bumper cover is popped out, there's a crease in it on the sill just to the right of center, there are marks where her grill impacted the bumper, the license plate lights are broken (still functional) and that's about it.
No telling yet how it looks BEHIND the bumper cover but I'm sure it's crushed though the outside seems to be dimensionally correct. Either she really didn't hit me that hard or the car is more resilient than I expected.
This is the front of her car (a rental Hyundai Kona):
The honeycomb pattern is what's showing on my bumper. Her license plate hit mine I guess but what's interesting is how her lower grill is way more damaged than my diverter. I don't know how that happened as mine appears untouched. I guess the Golf bumper crushed and rolled under and popped right back up. I guess she did not hit me as hard as it felt. I'm sure there's more damage you can't see.
Anyway, she did not have a California driver's license, only an ID card, she could not find her insurance and the car is a rental. As well as being kind of out of it. Not sure how you can rent a car without a valid driver's license but I guess that's a thing. She probably shouldn't have been on the road. Regardless, my insurance company, the ever-more-expensive-than-I'd-like AAA is handling it all so I'm OK there. AAA does not attempt to get diminished value from the other party so I have to do that myself by contacting them and that will be fun. My car only has 12,000 miles on it after 3 years, 3 months so it's fairly low in my opinion and has clearly lost value. If I keep it a long time, that's probably not really an issue but if I wanted to sell it in the near future, this won't help.
Oh, and instead of driving 72-75MPH the whole way up and back I set cruise at 70 and I got better mileage than usual, 32 instead of 28 with one stretch calculating out to 37 (a short stretch of 230 miles that only took 6 gallons. Also, these 19" wheels SUUUUUUUCK. I hit four, count 'em, FOUR potholes on the freeway and I expected to find at least 2 dented wheels but they miraculously stayed round. I've decided to drop down to 18's at the earliest opportunity.
So, that was last week for me. Good times.
It felt like she really rammed into me and I expected to see the whole back end smashed in but when I got out, it looked like this:
I was stunned that it didn't look damaged. Upon closer inspection, the left side of the bumper cover is popped out, there's a crease in it on the sill just to the right of center, there are marks where her grill impacted the bumper, the license plate lights are broken (still functional) and that's about it.
No telling yet how it looks BEHIND the bumper cover but I'm sure it's crushed though the outside seems to be dimensionally correct. Either she really didn't hit me that hard or the car is more resilient than I expected.
This is the front of her car (a rental Hyundai Kona):
Anyway, she did not have a California driver's license, only an ID card, she could not find her insurance and the car is a rental. As well as being kind of out of it. Not sure how you can rent a car without a valid driver's license but I guess that's a thing. She probably shouldn't have been on the road. Regardless, my insurance company, the ever-more-expensive-than-I'd-like AAA is handling it all so I'm OK there. AAA does not attempt to get diminished value from the other party so I have to do that myself by contacting them and that will be fun. My car only has 12,000 miles on it after 3 years, 3 months so it's fairly low in my opinion and has clearly lost value. If I keep it a long time, that's probably not really an issue but if I wanted to sell it in the near future, this won't help.
Oh, and instead of driving 72-75MPH the whole way up and back I set cruise at 70 and I got better mileage than usual, 32 instead of 28 with one stretch calculating out to 37 (a short stretch of 230 miles that only took 6 gallons. Also, these 19" wheels SUUUUUUUCK. I hit four, count 'em, FOUR potholes on the freeway and I expected to find at least 2 dented wheels but they miraculously stayed round. I've decided to drop down to 18's at the earliest opportunity.
So, that was last week for me. Good times.
