rear-ended

I got rear-ended today. It was a low-speed collision and no one was hurt. The other driver was a teenager more freaked out about what his parents were going to do to him than anything else. His car also fared much worse than mine. Funny how I can relate to that.

My car now has a somewhat ugly bumper, but is otherwise in good shape. You'll have to excuse the general dustiness of the car that might be obscuring what is collision damage and what is just dirt. The frequent lights rains followed by dusty wind make keeping a car clean, especially a dark colored one, rather futile. (Personally, I think the finger marks along the bottom of the trunk section are stylish.) If it looks like the top portion of the bumper along the middle is bowed upwards, that's because it is. However, the trunk works fine and the only thing it lost was a rubber stop that popped out that I was able to reattach. The only other easily noticeable damage is some paint transfer onto the left tailpipe that I might be able to simply rub off. Underneath the middle of the car, there is a very small dent into the wheel well that holds the spare tire. It's small enough to not merit another mention ever again. In the end, I need a new bumper and that's all I can see for the time being.

The other guy's car fared much worse than mine. If you're wondering about the coloring, the hood and right fender are not painted. Aside from the obvious front bumper, headlight, and hood damage, the right fender no longer fits properly. It looks like he fared so much worse than I did because my rear bumper was slightly taller than his front bumper. That's probably why my bumper ended up being bowed upwards in the top middle section. Meanwhile, the top of his bumper is damaged along with his hood and all the subsequent damage as the hood got pushed back. If you're wondering where his grill is, the 1999 Hyundai Accent is rather interestingly styled with no grill. For the observant reader, you'll notice that that picture is from New Zealand and you can see that the car is right-hand drive. Regardless (or is that irregardless) there's no grill on that model year.

I was planning on putting out a one month review of my car tomorrow. It's already written, but now I need to change a few things. I was going to have some comments about how I thought the rear bumper was flimsy, but I now see the value in that apparent flimsiness. The bumper gave ground in a low-speed collision the way it was supposed to and kept the rest of the car from being damaged. It performed very well and I'm very pleased that my car sustained relatively little damage.