h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Two and a half months in, and the inevitable has happened. I've had my first crash in my new car!

This morning as I was maneouvring my wheels off the pavement and on to the road, some bloke decided to go past me and we connected at the momen that my front wheel dropped off the kerb and the car slides sideways.

A dull thump...

He stops and gets out of his car. He looks at his front bumper and frowns. He come over to me and looks at the front corner of my car, and frowns again. He then says, "I can't see any damage at all, mate."

I get out of the car and I have a good look around, and I can't see anything wrong either.

A bit of general head scratching ensues and we come to the conclusion that the inch wide rubbery strip that runs around his front bumper impacted with my front tyre, which of course was turned out on maximum lock as I was trying to get out of a parking space.

A lucky escape all round.

He apologises and says that it was his fault as he was being a bit cheeky in driving past me as I was trying to pull out in such a narrow road. I accept his apology, we shake on it and we go our own separate ways.

Now, why can't I ever have an accident with someone like that? Seems every time I have a fender bender I connect with a complete nutter.

(that makes it sound frequent, I hope my insurance agent isn't a hootooer. )

You were playing bumper cars.


Although, I hope you got his info anyway. If he did indeed hit your wheel then he could have damaged your Constant Velocity joint if it's a front or four wheel drive or at least affected your alignment.

Is this one going to turn out to be a dream too?

Was also wanting to say *always* get the details anyway. Had a similar knock once (was the other person's fault) but neither of us could see any damage so we assumed there wasn't any. We parted glad there wouldn't be any need to involve the insurance companies and when I got home my brother noticed that in fact a whole section of the wing had been pushed out of its proper place - wasn't noticably dented, it had just moved.

Ended up just living with it as the whole car only cost me £250 so wasn't worth fixing. Wouldn't have felt the same with a newer more expensive car!

Anyhow, glad you weren't hurt.

I had an experience similar to kelli's and not dissimilar to GD's either.

I used to live on a very narrow street with cars parked on both sides. There wasn't room for two cars to pass in opposite directions so one would have to pull in where it could and give way to the other. That didn't happen one night and someone crashed into my landlady's car which was parked in front of my van, while trying to get past someone coming from the other end of the street. I looked at the side of my van and didn't see any damage so I went back in and went to bed. But next morning when I tried to pull away and go off on a job I found that the car that had hit my landlady's car had also clipped my offside front wheel which had been pointing outwards, and bent something very important to the steering so that it looked like my front wheels were both pointing inwards if the steering wheel was in the straight-ahead position.

If the driver hadn't also hit my landlady's car I wouldn't have had her details and been able to make a claim.

A lucky escape GD

We'll get you next time.......

There's nothing gone wrong with the car and the wheel in the couple of days since it happened. The steering feels exactly the same as it ever did before. And I've had the car up to some speeds where one could do some destructive testing, as it were.

That said, some of my neighbours weren't so lucky last night. At about 2:30am I heard a car cornering at speed into my road. I then heard a squeel of brakes and a bump or two and then a loud bang. When the dust had settled there was a Mini Metro wedged more or less sideways across the road and pinned front and back into the sides of cars on the opposing sides of the road. Going sideways down my street is a pretty impressive trick when there's hardly room enough to go in the normal direction.

The butchers bill is three cars, plus the rogue Mini are seriously damaged or totalled. Three more cars have had a biff and lost a wing mirror or had a scrape. One driver arrested and taken to the cells to sober up, and one driver's girlfriend in floods of tears about nearly being killed in an accident with her div boyfriend.

It took the police and their pick-up truck driver friend a good hour or so to unwedge everything and get the road clear again. They didn't want to damage any other cars (or wake up too many of the neighbours by making a loud racket) so had to take the whole process nice and slowly.

By my reckoning this is the fourth serious - and to be fair probably the worst - crash that we've had down the road this year

Any traffic calming measures in the offing?

'Div'

I haven't heard that for years

The road is a bit too narrow to put a sleeping policeman down. The camber plus a hump would knock one's steering out by a couple of inches as you went over it, and there really isn't the tolerance there to allow for a couple of inches off in one's course down the road.

The main roads up and down the hill, and the road where two cars can just about pass if everyone breathes in, do have traffic calming. The others rely on the fact that there is no room for maneouvre what so ever to control everyone's speed.

Excellent use of 'biff' there Very Wodehouse-esque.