Yesterday, I was the fifth car back stopped at a red light on US41. Everybody behind me was stopped as well, then BAM! The guy behind me decided to test the laws of physics or would it be metaphysics? He hit me hard. His vehicle’s airbag deployed. Everybody is ok.

We exchanged information, he kept saying it looks OK. I agreed, with the caveat that I have no idea what damage is underneath.

Here’s my wife’s car right after the accident (please excuse the two gray lines under the righthand taillight):



Looks good, right? There’s a scuff line between the red reflectors on the matte black portion of the bumper cover. That line goes right across two of the backup sensors. The backup sensor could be damaged. However, that isn’t the damage I’m referring to.

I didn’t find out until the afternoon when I picked the kids up from school: the tailgate won’t close. Unibody construction, he nailed the hitch which is bolted to the body, and something is racked enough that the tailgate won’t close.

His vehicle:

I expect that when it's all been repaired you'll find the cost to be in the 3000 dollar range give or take a thousand. What is really painful is that it's an ST and those are not at all easy to find replacements for.

Looks like the exhaust tips are tweaked also or is it distorted from the picture angle.

Check your exhaust system all the way to the engine.

Did you get a full shot of his front end?

Coworker got rear ended recently by a 3/4 ton Dodge, he was in a Colorado.
Looked like cosmetic damage, bedside, bumper & tailgate. I looked under & the driver's side leaf spring is skewed a bit which makes me think bent frame. He's still waiting on the body shop/ins to determine if it's totaled. Oh, and the guy that hit him had lapsed insurance.

2016 Colorado with 180k, my guess is 90% likely his is totaled.

Hope yours is repairable or that you're made whole on it.

I keep a solid [not hollow core] 2 ball drawbar in mine, have knocked a shin a couple times but might make a difference in a low speed bump.

It says Ford on it

Something similar happened to my daughters Honda Civic. In her case the car slid under my daughters failing to stop in time with rain slicked road.

In my daughters car they had to replace the sheet metal floor that holds the spare time, it was lifted up. If you didn't remove the spare tire under the carpet flap you would have never noticed. That ended up costing USAA (them) about $7k.

Moral of the story, make sure you look at your inside cabin under carpet areas for new misalignments.

HK Ag

This is why I leave a minimum of 1 car length ahead of me at lights. Sometimes several car lengths depending on location. Downslope of bridges, light on a major highway just coming into town, etc. And I check my mirror constantly when stopped.

quote:

Originally posted by Mustang-PaPa:
Looks like the exhaust tips are tweaked also or is it distorted from the picture angle.

Check your exhaust system all the way to the engine.

Did you get a full shot of his front end?

Good catch on the exhaust tips! They are staggered to begin with, so the camera angle makes them look weird. However, there’s definitely black plastic on the two inboard ones which stick out a half inch more than the two outboard ones. I’ve got pictures of those now and will have the repair shop check the entire exhaust system.

The mount for the trailer plug sockets is bent. I’m going to get under there with a real flashlight rather than the one on my phone and see what else I can find.

I did take pictures of his front end, and the deployed airbag. The guy is my age, he was apologetic, has a valid license and insurance.

Same thing happened to me in my Wifes Cadillac. First look, all I could see was a scuff, then noticed the exhaust was bent. $3500 later it was fixed. Luckily he had insurance.

Some asshole kid on his way to high school hit me one morning, damage looked minor but the frame was bent; transmission, which was not rebuildable, damaged; the body work was minimal. His insurance company, Travelers, would only allow about $2,000 to cover paint and two days' car rental, but my car was totaled and I ended up junking it.

Be interesting what a pro adjuster comes up with, you should get a good body shop to look at it and estimate damage as well as a comparison to the adjuster.

As others said, bet you find it's in the thousands, the sensors and electronics alone cost big bucks.

He may say it's "OK" to try and get you to say "don't worry about it buddy!"

Then you take it to a body shop and it's thousands of dollars of hidden damage.

NEVER let anyone off the hook.

Seems as if the DOT reflector on the right side is damaged in the center and possibly a stress mark on the sill trim just above it.

My guess is that being hit there may have bent the bumper reinforcement where it mounts to the chassis. Possibly causing the floor pan and sill to go out of alignment by being pushed inward (from the impact) and upward (from their car riding under your hitch).

For his airbag to deploy, he would have had to be going at minimum of 10 to 15 MPH (varies by manufacturer, so this is a guess) at the time of impact. Going by the pic of his car, it looks like you were to the left of him when he drove in to you, so the right side of yours it what I'd pay the most attention to.

More often than not, the reinforcement (and reflector) will have damage, but the elastrometric bumper cover will pop back in place and not show any visible damage.

Hopefully they can get this repaired and not have you need to buy something else with today's interest rates.

Good luck.

quote:

Be interesting what a pro adjuster comes up with, you should get a good body shop to look at it and estimate damage as well as a comparison to the adjuster

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Yep. My favorite body shop found all kinds of stuff from a similar collision. They made the adjuster come out as he just wanted to rely on pictures. I insisted on OEM parts and the adjuster reluctantly agreed. Good luck.

A competent body shop man may be able to tweak that tailgate back into shape. My former neighbor in Utah was just that sort of man.

You can never tell any more. There can be more damage underneath that cover.

I just had a client file a claim because he hit a Porsche Cayenne in a parking lot. Very minor. He was going to pay for it himself until he got the estimate. The total claim on that was almost $15,000.

We had a rental car a Mazda CX9 that a drunk driver pulled out in front of us on a country highway. Hit them at 40-45 mph. Right front damage including hood, bumper, quarter panel, headlight and passenger door. Couldn't open the door without having to push on it to exit the vehicle. Total repair from Enterprise show an estimate for $7,000.

You just don't know any more.

I got backed into in a parking lot. the damage was about 1.5 inches in diameter. Bill was 2k. Replacement of the plastic bumper and the sensors.

Looks like the gap that should be around the liftgate where it meets the bumper on the sides are gone. The left looks to be tighter than the right, but that could be the camera angle. I'm willing to bet that wherever the bumper meets the wheel well will be bowed out slightly and those seams will be tightened as well.

Maybe take a picture of the sides of the car looking from front to back and a solid profile picture would tell a little more too.

Tony.

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
He may say it's "OK" to try and get you to say "don't worry about it buddy!"

Then you take it to a body shop and it's thousands of dollars of hidden damage.

NEVER let anyone off the hook.

^^ THIS ^^

And as a corollary, if you're the victim NEVER agree to take care of it without involving insurance. High likelihood the MF'er:

doesn't actually have auto insurance. Likelihood even higher if you're in a state bordering Mexico.

is stringing you along only to disappear when it's time to actually to outlay cash. Might initially have good intentions, but then finds out how much inflation has hit the autobody industry.

both of the above

As an example, my neighbor and I were both off for Good Friday 2022. We decided to ride our motorcycles to a country lunch spot about an hour away, but my neighbor's bike needed gas. There is a gas station at a 4-way stop in the neighborhood and it's only 2 minutes away. I'm leading, I go through the 4 way stop first, I start looking around when he hasn't arrived at the gas station, I see his Harley Davidson Street Glide laying in the intersection, and a Suburban pulled off to the side. I hustle over, make sure my buddy is OK (yes but furious), and then go over and snap pics of the suburban's license plate, the front bumper, and driver's face. Long story short my buddy is OK (suburban hit motorcycle not him), the suburban driver actually follows my directions and pulls into gas station to exchange info, suburban driver seems like a nice guy, surburban driver talks my buddy into handling it without insurance as the damage looks cosmetic. Suburban driver communicates throughout after my buddy gets HD to the dealer, HD parts are of course insanely expensive, and suburban driver ghosts him when it's time to pay the bill. My buddy was out $2200 for what initially looked like cosmetic damage, and it's 4 months later so my buddy is faced with the decision to eat the $2200 or finally involve insurance.

---

Ego is the anesthesia that deadens the pain of stupidity

DISCLAIMER: These are the author's own personal views and do not represent the views of the author's employer.

My insurance agent was my third call: 911, my wife, insurance agent. I’ll be forwarding the pictures of the visible damages, his license, and insurance card to them.

I have an appointment on Monday to have it looked at by a body shop.

Should I be hiring an adjuster? I thought the insurance company would do that? I believe they did when a guy ran a stop sign and T-boned my F350. It actually bent the frame, but his PT Cruiser folded in half. It was $22,000 to put my 6 month old truck with 6,500 miles back together. They actually unbolted everything from the old frame and bolted it all onto the new frame. They must have done a good job because I have 160,000 on it and no issues that could have been caused by the accident.