A spider crawled at eye level across the inside of my windshield this morning, and my attention was diverted. Traffic stopped suddenly. I was too late on the brakes. The lower part of the plastic bumper of the SUV ahead of me separated from the upper part, but stayed attached. The driver said that the left tail light looks like it might be slightly out of position. The driver said he is uninjured. The Prius submarined under his bumper, and the front end is smashed. Bumpers are scuffed, but otherwise OK. Hood is folded almost in half, front body supports are ripped loose, radiator is pushed back. Since the car has over 100,000 miles on it (right around 240,000 miles, I think), and since the damage is so severe, I think the insurance company will call it totaled. No idea what the settlement on a 2005 Prius with all the options and a ton of miles will be.
I think I sprained my right great toe, which was on the brake at the time of impact.
A coworker just came into the office and said, ‘Do you carpool?’ I told her I didn’t. She said the receptionist told her I’d had a crash, and that she saw a black Prius in the carpool lane laying on its horn and tailgating a Neon. Then two miles later, there I was at the side of the road behind the silver SUV. She’d never seen a black Prius before, and thought the road-rager was me.
To be clear, I was not the black Prius in the carpool lane, and I was not road-raging and blowing my horn. She just saw two black Priuses for the first time, on the same road, at about the same time.
JLA I went to Kelly Blue Book and approximated your car. Looks like it is worth appx $4500 in a private sale. Link here to get specific and see your options.
ISTR NADA stops increasing the mileage deduction beyond 150,000 so you might get docked a bit more depending on the source used. Gather your maintenance records, my friend. You are about to sell your (preaccident) car. Glad it wasn’t the MG. You’d likely have been totaled as well!
Did any airbags deploy? That is sometimes the difference between a fixable car and a totaled car, just due to the several thousand dollars to replace the air bags.
But even without replacing the airbags, from your description of the damage, I would say it is totaled too.
Mr. Insurance Man called, and he thinks it’s totaled. The car basically had all of the options, so it took him a bit to list them all. 235,537 miles on it, which always impressed the maintenance guys when I took it in for routine maintenance.
Damn. New tires just about 3,000 miles ago, and I filled the tank this morning. I just got it paid off in March.
Dallas Jones: No, the air bags did not deploy. The insurance guy thinks it’s because I went under the SUV’s bumper, so the sensors were not aware of the impact.
Aren’t there laws against raising a car (truck/SUV) so high that a car hitting it would submarine under the bumper? Or are there only regulations on design of new cars, and not on user modifications?
After they tell you how much they’re going to pay you, you might try mentioning those two things. When one of my cars got totaled, I said “Can I get an extra $40 because I just put synthetic oil in it two weeks ago” and they said I could if I could show them the receipts, which I still had for some reason.
If might not hurt to ask for an extra, say, $500 for the tires and gas…this is what you’re paying them for after all.
And even that may not help if everybody’s coming to a sudden stop:
Car ahead brakes hard = nose dips, rear end raises several inches
You brake hard in response = your front dips several inches and hey presto! You’ve underrode even a reasonably-placed rear bumper.
And yeah, front airbag sensors are tied to the bumpers so a good underride may not trip 'em even at 30mph+. But the good news is, if you underride, the impact is absorbed by your hood, grille, fenders and all those other good ‘soft’ bits just in front of the motor. It’s still a hell of a thunk to the driver and very abrupt, but the crumple zones help to spread the deceleration over time reducing adverse effects to the driver. Generally speaking, if your bags don’t go off you wouldn’t have wanted them to anyway.
Glad you’re ok, at least. Have you thought about what your next vehicle will be?
I actually had a conversation about this at work TODAY. I passed by a monster truck on the road It was next to a Camry. I commented that if they hit in an accident, the truck’s tire would hit the Camry. Thanks for the link!
Yep. Wouldn’t even have been on the road today, were it not for the meeting. As for that, it was the accountant’s assistant who was gathering information on workflow and getting an idea of what we do in the department.
I drove the rental (Jeep Patriot – it’s all they had) to Bellingham Airport and dropped it off at Hertz there. The SO picked me up, and then we went to ‘lunch’ (about 16:00). She paid. She, and RN, looked at my toe when we got home. Yep, swollen. Sprained. I took some ibuprofen.
Sorry to hear about your car, and sorry you sprained your toe. Glad you’re not hurt worse. Speaking as someone who must wear some sort of cosmic “hit ME” sign while driving, I’d expect you to be somewhat achy in general, tomorrow, but of course, YMMV.
That’s my sign! I was stopped in traffic when the Jeep was a year old, and someone slammed me from behind. A few years ago, I was again stopped in traffic; this time in the Prius. Slammed from behind. Twice in the same week. Then last year or a couple of years ago, a raptor smashed the Prius’s windshield. I’m beginning to think I should go to 100% telecommuting.
That’s what SO-RN said. She said I should take four ibuprofen before I go to bed; and that if I’m in pain tomorrow, I should take ibuprofen four times a day.
She, and RN, looked at my toe when we got home. Yep, swollen. Sprained. I took some ibuprofen.