Sunday 24 May 2020

Have people forgotten how to drive?

Leaving our village by car, we approached what I refer to as a dinky bend. That is a bit in the road that sticks out maybe a couple of feet before a turn. You can't just drive straight on near it otherwise your tyre hits it hard.

Obviously the person coming in the opposite direction, and driving way too fast in our opinion for such a narrow country lane, didn't see it. He crossed the white line by about a foot. DB reacted very quickly but we didn't have much wriggle room.

A loud bang shook our car, we braked immediately. The other driver drove off. There was no way they didn't hear or feel the bang. We pulled into a layby and inspected the damage. He must have missed our car by a whisker but had demolished our wing mirror. DB checked for traffic and went to collect the pieces from the road.



This is an all dancing all singing mirror unit so we knew it would be expensive. We hoped they would just need to change the mirror itself but no. The whole unit needs to be changed, they need to remove the interior trim of the door to get to it.

Just under £600.

Another thing we have been waiting to do is change the aerial. It got caught on the uplifted garage door a while back and was ripped out. Just under £400 for that as they need to remove the roof inside lining to get to it.

Blimey. Maybe need to think about a dash cam!

19 comments:

  1. Alan has a dashcam in the truck and it's worth it's weight in gold, I'm seriously thinking about installing one in my car as they are relatively cheap ... especially so when you look at how much that wing mirror is going to cost you.

    I had my wing mirror ripped off once, it's scary and noisy when it happens isn't it.

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  2. Expensive time ahead - once we would have bought a whole car for that much!

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    1. My current car [a relatively small toyaota] costs as much to full up with petrol as my first car [a mini] cost to BUY back in the 1970s

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  3. Forgotten how to drive? When I see the standard of some drivers I wonder if they ever learned?

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  4. Oh, my gosh. That is so costly!!!
    xx

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    Replies
    1. Unfortunately yes and just the mirror could have been changed for less than £30.

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  5. People who drive off after an accident they'd caused are despicable. Presumably they don't have insurance...they certainly don't have a conscience! It's lucky there wasn't more damage (although £600 is a hefty amount!) and you weren't injured.

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    Replies
    1. Thank goodness but he was only three inches away from the car body:(

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  6. We too have invested in a dashcam. One incident like this and it would be worth it

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  7. PS very sorry about the incident- scary as well as costly...

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  8. That's dreadful. My son said exactly the same thing after his shopping last week. Three times people just pulled out in front of him without looking. Fortunately he is a very careful driver and managed to avoid them. I have also found people are just driving too fast. Glad DB managed to avoid a worse crash and avoid injury.

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    Replies
    1. Can’t imagine what driving in more crowded roads will be like.

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  9. The same thing happened to us except the arm immediately folded. So although the mirror was cracked there wasn't a mark on the casing, amazing considering the noise. Like you we stopped they didnt.

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    Replies
    1. Ours folded but both the casing and mirror landed in the road.

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