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Dec. 28th, 2006 01:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
king_pellinorMy first proper car accident happened yesterday. All in all, it seems to have been quite a nice gentle introduction to the art.
Coming up on a side road to turn right on to a dual carriageway (one lane each way) just before a roundabout (the Air Balloon one, just south of Cheltenham, for those who kow it), I checked both ways and it seemed clear, although I could see headlights on the roundabout off to the right. So I pulled out, and just as I started moving I realised there was a motorbike coming, so I jammed on the brakes and stopped right across the near lane of the road, allowing him to slam solidly ino the front right wing of the car and do a neat flip to land on his back on the bonnet.
My door being blocked by the bike, I waited until he'd gotten off the bonnet and pulled the bike up before getting out. There wasn't much to do other than apologise: he seemed to consider himself fine, and seemed more resigned to having to deal with an inconvenience than cross. The important bits of the car seemed to be OK, so I drove it slowly over to the side of the road while he took the bike to the other side.
A car driver had stopped, meanwhile - he was immediately after the motorbike, and had driven round behind me. He checked everyone was OK, left his name and address in case of being needed as a witness, and went off.
After swapping names and addresses with the biker (hurrah for my new habit of carrying a small hardback notebook and pen in my coat pocket) we drove slowly up to the Air Balloon and parked in the carpark, and rang VW Emergency Assistance for help. After a few questions and a bit of perusing the atlas to find the road number, they sent an AA lorry to pick us up and take us down to Southampton, where we missed our 11.00 ferry by minutes. The driver explained that he couldn't get to the Island, so left us there to make our own way across. I'm not sure what would have been done had the car been undrivable - I suppose we'd have had to leave the car in a Southampon garage. I noticed that in all the marshalling etc only one person commented on the big dents and loose bits of plastic.
So enough of the afternoon was spent phoning insurance companies and garages that I couldn't get in to work at all (I'd intended to leave Elspeth in Southampton to bring the car back, while I went to work).
Total of the damage (tbc by chap from the garage):
- Wing dented, making driver's door hard to open
- Bonnet dented
- Windscreen slightly cracked
- plastic bits of bumper rather mangled and bits dropped off
- hole in left-hand side of bumper, as if something has been driven through
- according to garage chap, possible bending of some frame or other
Musings:
- Looking back on the scene of the accident, the collision happened because I stopped asap while the biker tried to go ahead of me. There was plenty of space behind me - the witness's car managed it easily. Had I accelerated out of it while he went behind, there would probably have been no problem other than tattered nerves. Having said that, given that I had no idea of his course and speed I think we both did right: I'd much rather have a greater chance of a low-speed collision than a smaller chance of a fast one, so braking was the right thing to do; and it's probably better for him to aim where I'm not and hopefully won't get to than to aim towards where I am but might get out of the way.
- The Isle of Wight is a country apart. The AA won't recover a car to there, the insurance company has no friendly garages there, and I find that the courtesy car we've been given is not to be taken to the north island as the insurance stops at the Solent [NB now fixed]. We need a bridge.
- It's hard to know what to say to someone you've introduced yourself to by dumping him flat on his back at speed.
- I don't know why I didn't see him. I have a vague memory (I will rarely admit to a clear memory of anything) of studying the lights at the roundabout carefully, as that sort of thing is hard to analyse. I can only think that he merged with the lights of a car (perhaps the witness's?) behind him. The best scenario I could construct would be that he overtook the witness's car as he came off the roundabout, and so I may have seen a car going nice and slow which turned into a motorbike which wasn't. This is of course merely trying to come up with a way of blaming him, though, :-) and is not supported by any evidence I have.
Coming up on a side road to turn right on to a dual carriageway (one lane each way) just before a roundabout (the Air Balloon one, just south of Cheltenham, for those who kow it), I checked both ways and it seemed clear, although I could see headlights on the roundabout off to the right. So I pulled out, and just as I started moving I realised there was a motorbike coming, so I jammed on the brakes and stopped right across the near lane of the road, allowing him to slam solidly ino the front right wing of the car and do a neat flip to land on his back on the bonnet.
My door being blocked by the bike, I waited until he'd gotten off the bonnet and pulled the bike up before getting out. There wasn't much to do other than apologise: he seemed to consider himself fine, and seemed more resigned to having to deal with an inconvenience than cross. The important bits of the car seemed to be OK, so I drove it slowly over to the side of the road while he took the bike to the other side.
A car driver had stopped, meanwhile - he was immediately after the motorbike, and had driven round behind me. He checked everyone was OK, left his name and address in case of being needed as a witness, and went off.
After swapping names and addresses with the biker (hurrah for my new habit of carrying a small hardback notebook and pen in my coat pocket) we drove slowly up to the Air Balloon and parked in the carpark, and rang VW Emergency Assistance for help. After a few questions and a bit of perusing the atlas to find the road number, they sent an AA lorry to pick us up and take us down to Southampton, where we missed our 11.00 ferry by minutes. The driver explained that he couldn't get to the Island, so left us there to make our own way across. I'm not sure what would have been done had the car been undrivable - I suppose we'd have had to leave the car in a Southampon garage. I noticed that in all the marshalling etc only one person commented on the big dents and loose bits of plastic.
So enough of the afternoon was spent phoning insurance companies and garages that I couldn't get in to work at all (I'd intended to leave Elspeth in Southampton to bring the car back, while I went to work).
Total of the damage (tbc by chap from the garage):
- Wing dented, making driver's door hard to open
- Bonnet dented
- Windscreen slightly cracked
- plastic bits of bumper rather mangled and bits dropped off
- hole in left-hand side of bumper, as if something has been driven through
- according to garage chap, possible bending of some frame or other
Musings:
- Looking back on the scene of the accident, the collision happened because I stopped asap while the biker tried to go ahead of me. There was plenty of space behind me - the witness's car managed it easily. Had I accelerated out of it while he went behind, there would probably have been no problem other than tattered nerves. Having said that, given that I had no idea of his course and speed I think we both did right: I'd much rather have a greater chance of a low-speed collision than a smaller chance of a fast one, so braking was the right thing to do; and it's probably better for him to aim where I'm not and hopefully won't get to than to aim towards where I am but might get out of the way.
- The Isle of Wight is a country apart. The AA won't recover a car to there, the insurance company has no friendly garages there, and I find that the courtesy car we've been given is not to be taken to the north island as the insurance stops at the Solent [NB now fixed]. We need a bridge.
- It's hard to know what to say to someone you've introduced yourself to by dumping him flat on his back at speed.
- I don't know why I didn't see him. I have a vague memory (I will rarely admit to a clear memory of anything) of studying the lights at the roundabout carefully, as that sort of thing is hard to analyse. I can only think that he merged with the lights of a car (perhaps the witness's?) behind him. The best scenario I could construct would be that he overtook the witness's car as he came off the roundabout, and so I may have seen a car going nice and slow which turned into a motorbike which wasn't. This is of course merely trying to come up with a way of blaming him, though, :-) and is not supported by any evidence I have.
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no subject
Date: 2006-12-28 01:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-28 01:32 pm (UTC)But thanks :-)
no subject
Date: 2006-12-28 01:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-28 06:12 pm (UTC)Also, on the continent people carry forms from their insurance companies in the car, so you just need to exchange these and send them to your company. Seems an eminently sensible idea to me.
Neuromancer
no subject
Date: 2006-12-28 09:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-28 11:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-08 04:07 pm (UTC)I'm glad you/bike guy are okay.
*hug*
no subject
Date: 2007-01-09 10:26 am (UTC)