Two evenings ago, I got into a fender-bender. It was completely my fault; I was behind a car in the turning lane at a red light. The car in front made as if to make the turn and I, quite foolishly, took my foot on the brake and looked over to the left to prepare to make my turn. The guy in front had changed his mind about turning, and I hit him, at about 3-5 miles per hour.
Now I called it a “fender-bender” but, as it turned out, no fenders were bent. The driver of the other car and I checked his bumper, his lights, and his trunk and latch, and there was no damage whatsoever. I apologized, he said “de nada,” and we went on our ways.
In other words, I dodged a bullet. An accident that was completely my fault, and I got to drive away with no exchange of insurance info, no money out of my pocket, no police report, etc.
So why am I posting a Pit thread, you ask? Well, here’s the thing: I drive a 1979 Cadillac Coupe D’Ville. It’s 85 tons of Detroit steel (approximately); I should have turned the other driver’s pissant little early-90’s Buick into a quivering hulk of aluminum and plastic. How the hell will I ever be recognized as god of the road and lord of all I survey if my car won’t total the cars it hits?!!
Yeah, sure, I don’t have to pay any money or have my insurance premiums increased. Small compensation; couldn’t I at least have scratched his paint job?
Dude, my shitty little plastic-and-tinfoil 95 Prizm put a two-inch hole in a new Beamer when I bollocksed a parallel-parking job a couple years back. Trade ya!
I was in a similar fender bender with my Honda Civic. It was nearly totalled. I understand crumple zones and all those happy safety improvements. I am sure I am in the minority in saying that I would gladly trade an extra 5% chance of being seriously injured in an accident for a car that didn’t crumple like a slug sprinkled with salt.
Not only do they explode, Arcite, but they fly dozens of feet into the air while doing amazing stunts! (Barrel rolls, end-overs, etc). And then when all is said and done - they land on another car that doesn’t explode!
Guess you have to cushion that impact. I think the OP has a dud for a car.
I used to drive a four-stroke Trabant. Made mostly of compressed cardboard and resin and designed to take a 650cc two-stroke engine, in the last two years of production some lunatic decided it would be a laugh to fit them with an East German copy of the VW Polo engine made under license. Being so light it had wicked acceleration and a top speed of 140km/h. Crumple zone? Just one, but that was the whole car. I found the best way to avoid serious injury or death was to avoid hitting anything, even at low speed.
My best friend rear-ended some guy’s Audi in his Jeep Grand Cherokee on the freeway. His front bumper? Caved in so much it smashed the fan/radiator to shit. The Audi? only had a scratch on the bumper! :eek:
It was very bizarre. The Jeep must’ve weighed 3 times as much as the Audi, it was at least that much BIGGER. I have no idea what they make Audis out of to smash an SUV like that.
My Bug gets rear ended… well, not frequently, but about six times since I’ve owned her. Stop and go traffic, and a moron behind me. No, I’m not talking about me stopping short, I’ve even seen it once, they just gracefully ram a stopped car. I’ve got a pair of round scars from the front license plate, and that’s about it.
I hit an ancient Mercury Topaz in my gigantic Taurus. The dude ran a red light, and by the time I saw him, I stepped on the brake. He had seen me to begin with and therefore was haulin’ ass. I rolled into him slowly, he bounced off of my front end, his car all crumpled. My car had a little tiny hole in its plastic. I was the queen of the road.
Am I reading that right? An imperial ton isn’t too different from a metric tonne, is it? I thought cars generally weighed around one or two tonnes at most.
You’re more than welcome to crumple my Kia Rio. Just make sure I’m not in it, m’kay? Or just crumple the back end while I’m in the front, so I can at least claim injury.
Hyperbole, Fenris. A US ton = 2000 pounds ~= 910 kg.
Once I had a fender bender (my fault), my mid-size sedan vs. the SUV. My fender into his bumper, big dent on my end, not a scratch on his. He wanted my info and told me he’d give me a call if he detected any frame damage after he “put it up on the rack.” :rolleyes:
Sua, you need a REAL Caddie, not that crappy little downsized one. Almost bought a '73 a few years ago–185 tons (hyperbole) and 500 cubic inches/8 liters (no hyperbole) of manly automobile. Or take my brother’s '55–FFF-cup armor-plated tits for bumpers and next to no brakes. Mo-fo’d take out the USS Missouri, much less an Explorer. THAT was a CAR!
I was in a Topaz that rearended a Buick at about 10 mph (someone else was driving, it had just started raining and the brakes didn’t catch). The Topaz crumpled like a cheap aluminum can, and the owner of the Buick was screaming and hollering about the inch-square piece of plastic that had broken off of part of her bumper. Of course, half the dents in that Topaz were from its owner’s Doc Martens …
Tauruses on the other hand … well yeah, they’re huge. But my dad was in a fenderbender with an uninsured Mercedes (there are a lot of uninsured luxury cars where I grew up, despite California’s Thou Must Have Auto Insurance law), and while the car still drove, the damage – combined with the low value of an '89 Taurus – led the insurance company to declare it totalled.
To get the salvage title straightened out, we had to replace the one piece that had broken – the plastic bit the headlights attach to. You have to be able to properly aim the headlights, y’see. So, one part from a junkyard and an afternoon’s worth of work later, I was cursing whatever freakin’ genius decided to use both metric and non-metric bits on the same damn piece.
The '79 model year was the last of the Cadillac land yachts - the Suamobile is not downsized. Admittedly, it only has a 7 liter engine (no hyperbole), but otherwise it is quite the monster - the trunk is larger than most NYC studio apartments (OK, that’s a slight bit of hyperbole).
(or possibly very :o)