Sharp turns at tailgating at slow speeds
Sooo as you've probably heard, I got into my first car crash on Thursday morning. I was driving to school and it was about 7:45. I usually take High House and then turn onto the school road, but the line at the light was so long that I decided to take a small shortcut through a shopping center by way of Cornerstone Drive. However, there was a long line of cars on Cornerstone Drive as well. The person two cars ahead of me decided that he'd rather not wait and turned pretty suddenly onto a side road. I hadn't been keeping the two second gap in between me and the car ahead, so when they stopped quickly for the turning car, I slammed on my brakes but it wasn't enough. My hood buckled and steam started coming up from the front. I sort of realized what had happened, turned off the car, and got out.
The person I hit was an asian woman with two girls in the back seat. Her car wasn't damaged too badly. The only thing wrong was that her back bumper had partially fallen off, but the trunk and everything was fine. My car's front was smashed up; aside from the hood being buckled, both headlights were shot and the radiator was destroyed. Some liquid container had been broken and was leaking all over the road. The woman found somebody to drive her kids into school and then came over to talk to me. She wasn't mad, thank goodness, and kept telling me that it wasn't my fault. I called my dad and then I called the police.
The rest was pretty uneventful. People driving by would stop to make sure noone was hurt and that the police had been called. The lady I hit kept telling my dad, the policeman, and me that it wasn't my fault, but the guy in front of her for turning so quickly. The policeman didn't write me a ticket, thank goodness. We found out that my car still has no trouble at all with starting or driving. It's sitting in a junkyard on Chatham right now. It's sort of borderline totaled; it just depends on whether we want to bother getting such an old car fixed. If just the hood and the radiator are damaged, then we'll probably replace them and I'll be driving again in a week or so. If the engine has been pushed back or anything else like that, then we might just get rid of it. I hope we don't. As much as I complain about it, I really do like that car.
We're going to go look at it some time today and probably decide if it's worth fixing. Lesson: Stop tailgating.
Edit: Just got back from assessing the damage with Mom and George. It's fixable. We're getting it towed to a crash center on Monday morning. If it costs too much then new car for Monica. Otherwise, it'll be fixed and I'll hopefully have it back in a couple of weeks. :D
The person I hit was an asian woman with two girls in the back seat. Her car wasn't damaged too badly. The only thing wrong was that her back bumper had partially fallen off, but the trunk and everything was fine. My car's front was smashed up; aside from the hood being buckled, both headlights were shot and the radiator was destroyed. Some liquid container had been broken and was leaking all over the road. The woman found somebody to drive her kids into school and then came over to talk to me. She wasn't mad, thank goodness, and kept telling me that it wasn't my fault. I called my dad and then I called the police.
The rest was pretty uneventful. People driving by would stop to make sure noone was hurt and that the police had been called. The lady I hit kept telling my dad, the policeman, and me that it wasn't my fault, but the guy in front of her for turning so quickly. The policeman didn't write me a ticket, thank goodness. We found out that my car still has no trouble at all with starting or driving. It's sitting in a junkyard on Chatham right now. It's sort of borderline totaled; it just depends on whether we want to bother getting such an old car fixed. If just the hood and the radiator are damaged, then we'll probably replace them and I'll be driving again in a week or so. If the engine has been pushed back or anything else like that, then we might just get rid of it. I hope we don't. As much as I complain about it, I really do like that car.
We're going to go look at it some time today and probably decide if it's worth fixing. Lesson: Stop tailgating.
Edit: Just got back from assessing the damage with Mom and George. It's fixable. We're getting it towed to a crash center on Monday morning. If it costs too much then new car for Monica. Otherwise, it'll be fixed and I'll hopefully have it back in a couple of weeks. :D