This is the first time I have written a
day log, but since something especially
unusual happened today, I will add a note here.
At 5:00pm my parked car and two others got smashed into by a van in the parking lot at my work. Someone was getting picked up from work by a lady in a van, and her brakes gave out as she was backing out, and so she sped off and slammed into three cars.
The first car she hit had the entire front end compressed in. My car was backed in and parked next to an empty spot, so by the time she took out the first car, she was deflected over to the front right corner of my car, which she hit to the side and knocked my car an almost perfect 90 degrees to the left. This dislodged the right side of my front bumper and dented a little on the side of my car, but most of the body damage was around the front right wheel.
I have a Saturn (you know, with the plastic doors), and I can see where something hit my door, but it's not dented there. However, the worst potential damage is going to be in my front end wheel system since the van compressed my car's front wheels together when my car stopped at the parking curb, so at the minimum I will have to get an alignment even if nothing was damaged. The third car was hit by her trailer hitch straight into the door, finally stopping the van. If that car wasn't there, she would have flew out into 3 lanes of traffic.
So it was something like this:
=======================================================
(before) 3 lane hiway
my car | |
car 1 / | | | |
__ __ __ car 3 | |
|--| |--| |--|/ | | | |
|__| |__| |__| | |
|__| |__| |__| -' | | |
|
| | |
-. |
____ | | | |
| | |
| __ | | | |
| | | | |
| |__| -van | | | |
| |__| | |
| | | | |
\ | |
building
=======================================================
(after)
my car | |
car 1 __\__ car 3 | | | |
\_ || | | __ | |
/|\ ||__|_|____|--| | | | |
\/|\ | | |__| | |
\/ | ....|_|___|__| | | | |
\/.` \ --' |
. van | | |
: |
____ : --. | | |
| : | |
| : | | | |
| : | |
| | | | |
=======================================================
At least I got the least amount of visible damage. Nobody got hurt, since all of the cars were parked and nobody was in them. Everyone had insurance, so it shouldn't cost anything, but knowing insurance companies, my cost will probably go up. I'm kind of pissed because I like my car and if there's anything wrong, it's probably never going to work the same again. I hate to trade it in, but I've had too many cars in the past that were used and had problems, so I finally gave in and got this car new (in 1996) so I wouldn't have those occasional random problems popping up.