Aarrgh

[spider]

Long and short of it, some clown scraped along the nsf wing of the 106 in a car park today. Was facing forwards (outwards) against the wall so it was the car on the left that did it.

Of course, when I phoned (did not notice till I got home) they said any camera's were operated by another shop in the same car park, rang them eventually got through and they said it was not covered, I have had a look back and I think they are telling the truth, I could not see one in that direction / area unfortunately.

Does not look bad now I've wiped it down, although there's a mighty dent in it. Only consolation is that same wing was replaced by the previous owner at some point, the panel gaps were fine although you could see the wing bolts had been undone at some point in its life so that wing had been off for some reason previously, no sign of anything else (front panel etc) being touched previously though, original stickers etc

Hmm

[spider]

Cannot see the scratches / scores in this pic although the dent / bend (look at bumper alignment gap!) is obvious:



The 'blue thing' is me not on the car, is just my rather (over) striking blue shirt

[CitroJim]

That's terrible Andy. people are so careless these days Just walked up to the Post Office and back and the number of cars you see these days bearing scratches and dents is unbelievable.

All just part of the throw-away couldn't give a damm mindset of this country now I guess

On the bright side it looks a nice clean dent so hopefully it'll pop out without too much trouble...

[spider]

True. May be easier to obtain a good used one in the correct colour though, we'll see.

I'm debating on informing anyone as you're sort of supposed to, the trouble is the last time I did this about six years ago they immediately took away my no claims until they sorted it which took nine months due to the other driver (same thing really, parked and damaged) denying it, did not help that it was a hire car (with his own insurance due to age) at the time, was a horrible mess to sort out.

Then again, I don't know who the third party is in this case, just concerned in case they say its me or something, although they did that last time at one stage ( told you it was messy! ) until it was pointed out I was not even in the car. Hmm :/

[Citroenmad]

That is a real shame, I can't understand how people can damage someones property and not leave a note to own up and give details. My conscience wouldn't let me leave if I hit another car.

Someone hit our C1 the other week, quite a massive scuff around the on the back bumper, around the corner. Luckily most of it polished out but there is paint off.

I think yours will pop out, you should be able to access it with the wheel arch liner out.

[CitroJim]

I can't understand how people can damage someones property and not leave a note to own up and give details. My conscience wouldn't let me leave if I hit another car.

Same here Chris. Although shamefully I have to confess I have. Mitigating circumstances though. I was suffering a nervous breakdown at the time but you know, even though it was about 14 years ago now I still feel terribly guilty about it.

I was taking Robyn to school and parking was tight. I just over-cooked pulling out and touched the door of another car and left a small dent.

Touch-wood I've never caused any accidental damage except on that occasion and if I ever should be sure I'd own up.

That incident I relate above made me sit up, think and smell the coffee as it were. It may have caused a dent but perhaps in some small way it started me on the road to recovery... It make me realise just how bad I was.

Mind you, having watched on many occasions how some peoples take on parking looks more like abandonment, such as what happened to you Andy is not at all surprising. The current trend for the huge wide SUV things doesn't help and if I were a betting man I'd not be at all surprised if it was not one of those that inflicted your wound Andy...

[Citroenmad]

Worse things happen Jim. Im sure a few of these dents must be caused and gone without noticing by the driver of the offending car, as Its probably quite easy to nudge something without fully noticing.

I pulled up outside a row of shops last week, I was following a massive pickup, you know the thing, huge, black, shiny, massive wheels and about brand new. I got a space before him (there were lotsy), I parked my car, went into a shop and as I returned was informed that the pickup had reversed into a car and driven away. The car it hit was a very tidy Audi A6 Avant, it hit it in the wing and front headlight area, causing quite a bit of damage. The poor chap who owned the car seemed stunned at the impact. Unfortunately no one got the reg of the truck and I wasn't paying enough attention to take note as I was following it either. I can only imagine how furious the owner of the Audi was.

Sad, it really is.

[CitroJim]

It doesn't seem to help that car parking spaces do not seem to have grown to accommodate these monsters. In fact some parking spaces seem to have actually shrunk, especially Tesco ones.

I notice a lot of people owning these 'lifestyle' wagons seem to park in the disabled bays and parent and child bays at Tesco simply because they won't fit a normal bay. That's really, really naughty. You'd think some days that to be disabled requires the ownership of a massive ute or some other humungus 4x4 to get around. I know from genuinely disabled people they actually prefer something small and easy and go incandescent at the abuses of their parking.

I also notice a trend of more and more people using tranny vans as their family car - presumably supplied by their employer and thus saves them the cost of a normal private vehicle. They cause parking problems.

The more considerate monster car/ute and tranny van owners park out in the more isolated and unoccupied areas of car parks but it's strange how some of these must feel very agoraphobic as they do like to cuddle up closely to a small car whenever possible. I guess they feel lonely; for example:

One day recently Siany practised parking in a Tesco car park. She practised in a deserted area and there we left her car, neatly parked, and did a bit of shopping. When we came out we couldn't see her Pixo because some scruffy pikey tranny van (a massive LWB Sprinter) had parked as close to her as physically possible without actually touching her in an otherwise totally empty area of the car park. Honestly, this person could have parked anywhere but chose, due to some mental process I cannot understand, right next to Siany's poor little Pixo.

I got my own back on this odious little character with strategically placed trollies around his van... I wonder if he twigged why? Doubt it somehow...

[spider]

Thanks all.

I'm not sure if parking spaces have shrunk although re-designing a carpark layouts I guess they might loose an inch or three from each bay thereby gaining (over the whole space) a lot more spaces...

Cars have grown now though. As a non PSA example, if you look at the size of a MK1 Escort and compare it to a new Fiesta, you'll notice they are about the same size almost. I guess modern design / safety means larger cars although its debatable if that's really effective or not, especially when two 4x4's collide...

I may get a used wing in the correct colour not sure yet really as its chipped around the headlight anyway now There are a few minor scrapes elsewhere but not to this degree and on plastic components only. We'll see.

[Citroenmad]

Spaces are certainly getting no bigger, strange given that most cars are growing in size. For unknown reasons, it just does not make sense to me ...

For example, take the Citroen line up. Once up on a time we had the AX, a tiny little thing but was infact quite spacious. That grew into the slightly bigger Saxo, though still a small car. The C3 grew the size again and the new one has grown more still. This creates a gap for a truely small car, enter the C1, which is about AX sized .... Presumably the next C1 will be ever so slightly bigger and the whole thing will start again.

Its true of all car sizes, just look at the BX and the XM. The BX was a family sized car, which could now be classed as a medium sized family car, not a large family car like the rep mobiles of today. The Xantia also is quite small by todays standards, though it is larger than a BX. The C5 is a much bigger car and infact the facelifted C5 hatchback is as long as an XM hatchback. Also strange as I thought the larger saloons, such as the XM, Omega, Granada, and so on, didn't sell partly due to their sheer size.

[nametooshort]

I hate inconsiderate people who do that. It seems people drive so badly these days, even I notice it, and I am not a great driver. I don't want to cause any kind of international tensions (lol) but I seem to notice it a lot more in the UK. People on the roads seem to all be angry and in a hurry. Even in the middle of NY when its gridlocked people don't seem to get as angry as I notice UK drivers do.

Iv had a lot of incidences. One time me and my friend were driving around in this merc G-wagen, from the airport (where they picked me up) to someplace in London, and some guy in a very heavily 'modified' Golf decided that he didn't like driving at the speed limit, and tried to pass at a stupidly high speed (like, maybe 60, in a 30 zone), but ended up losing it and hitting the side of the merc. Luckily his car's front went right under the Merc's rear wheel. This was a ruggedized top spec G-wagen with all the trimmings, so we didn't even feel anything much inside, and there was absolutely no damage to the merc, it just rolled right over the Golf's hood. The thing that really shocked me was the guy driving the Golf didn't stop, and instead tried to get away! The front of his car was squished (G-wagens are not very light!), the hood was all bent, the radiator was shooting steam out, and you can see the struts were bent because the front wheels were all out of camber, and yet he was gassing it up the road! Eventually he came to a stop since I assume the engine or tranny lost it, and as we went to very slowly pass him he started throwing fries and McDonalds drink at the merc, and then some girl (who I assume was the person he was trying to impress by this maneuver) climbed out of the other side of his car and started shouting at him and hitting him with any object she could pick up. Poor guy, I almost felt sorry for him. Try to impress a girl like that and end up messing it up so bad.

And this is why we love G-wagens and not land-cruisers like everyone else. They may be kinda old now, but they are indestructible.

Also once I saw a taxi scrape a car and just drive off. You can tell the driver noticed because he actually looked over his shoulder and then drove off really quickly.

Finally one time in a service station on the M25 in the UK (I think) we saw a couple of heavily modified Corsa Bs trying to do donuts (I think they didn't notice the Corsa B is FWD) in the parking lot, and one hit a big truck which was parked up. When they did that they panicked and tried to get away, but took the very long way around, which gave the truck driver plenty of time to block the exit.

I don't really understand why people do that. Can't people just chill out?

In the US people bump each other more often in city traffic, but they are less angry about it, and tend to just swap details and carry on with their lives.

Besides, as the old proverb goes, in the city, the most valuable vehicle is a crappy little beat up dented hatchback that cost 200 bucks and you couldn't care less about. Then if someone scrapes it, who cares?

[red_dwarfers]

If I have to travel somewhere during a busy time of day and I can get there by other methods relatively cheaply I will. I've only been doing this the last couple of months and it's certainly allowed me to enjoy driving a bit more, people appear to be in less of a rush!

I had three close ones Thursday, firstly I was going around a gentle right hand bend and a Land Rover was coming towards me on my side of the road, I think he was planning to overtake the lorry that was in front. The word planning used loosely, more like lets go for it and hope for the best. Quite a scary moment for my 3 mates, they suddenly went dead silent.

A few minutes after that a tractor came to an almost standstill on a side road then decided to pull out the other direction. It would have been fine if it was just his tractor but he had a dirty great long trailer on the end, which of course takes a little while to completely go onto his side of the road. Thing is there was nothing behind me so it was completely pointless for him to rush.

Lastly, I caught up to a tractor but couldn't overtake as I wouldn't have got back to my side of the road before coming up to the crest of a hill. I caught a glimpse of a car coming up behind rather quickly, he powered on past the car behind me and me, started to overtake the tractor then he thought better of it so stuck the brakes on and slipped into the gap between me and the tractor. Good job really as a few seconds later a car passed us on the other side. The thing that really gets me is that just over the crest of the hill, you can see a good 1/2 mile so some really easy and safe overtaking can be done!

It's good to get that off my chest!

[CitroJim]

I saw an amazing thing on the M25 a while back. A tranny van minding it's own business in the outside lane at a pretty busy time with all traffic moving at 60 or so was clearly in the way of a big Merc.

The big Merc simply and quite deliberately shunted the van, not realising the van had a safety bar (big thick bumper) installed. The Merc ended up badly off with a well crumpled front and a beautifully tented bonnet...

The van pulled over and the Merc just accelerated past seemingly quite oblivious of the damage the car had sustained.

I expected to see the Merc on the hard shoulder a little way along the road but never did...

Absolutely unbelievable... If I'd not witnessed it with my own eyes I'd never have believed it...

Just yesterday, tonking along in the V6 on a country road at quite a pace I spotted a tractor waiting to pull out and turn right. He saw me and thought he'd wait but he didn't. he pulled out and then I saw he was towing an enormously long trailer. No way he was going to make it with me travelling at the speed I was without a coming-together.

Good job I fixed the ABS problem and good job the Xantia has bloody good brakes

[Northern_Mike]

Just yesterday, tonking along in the V6 on a country road at quite a pace I spotted a tractor waiting to pull out and turn right. He saw me and thought he'd wait but he didn't. he pulled out and then I saw he was towing an enormously long trailer. No way he was going to make it with me travelling at the speed I was without a coming-together.

Bloody tractors shouldn't be allowed on the road. An incident identical to the one you describe caused me to write off my CBR600 and cost me a broken ankle. Could have been a lot worse, at least I managed to slow down quite a bit before I decided it was time to lay the bike down and get off it.

[CitroJim]

Could have been a lot worse, at least I managed to slow down quite a bit before I decided it was time to lay the bike down and get off it.

Ohh, that was nasty Mike...

The particular place where I saw this particular tractor is a well-known black-spot which has claimed many victims in the past. It's the turning off for Cranfield University on the road between Newport Pagnell and Cranfield. One to be very careful of as although they're only little roads they carry a heavy load of traffic. Cranfield is an odd little town as it can be reached only via rather narrow unclassified roads in all directions.

Tractor drivers have to take a test before they can legally drive on the road. The test is erm, not exactly challenging shall we say...