It had to happen eventually

It had to happen eventually

I've loved my car ever since I got it.. Customized some stuff (probably not as much as most people on this board)..

On the way home from a truly horrible day at work, heading to the gym, and going about 40 (posted speed limit), overcast/sunny day in Seattle.. Everyone is cruising at 40, i'm thinking "WOW! Traffic was a breeze tonight! Only 2 more blocks to Bally's!"

I must've taken my eyes off the road or I must've been so tired that I do not remember what happened next. I looked up, the 94 Toyota SR5 pickup in front of me was dead stopped.. i was about 10 feet (maybe) from him..

Sure enough, i hit him dead on.. i tried to swerve but not enough time or brakes to do it.. my bumper came clean off, both headlights shattered, radiator started bleeding like nothing else.. and of course, the shattered parts all over the road..

The ironic thing is the airbags did not deploy, my car slightly sputtered, and continuing idling as if nothing was wrong. I did manage to bang my knees agains the steering column *two bruises quickly appeared about an hour later*

The other drive jumped out and screamed at me "What the f*ck?" (as if i wanted to mangle my car this way).

I'm standing there, watching in slow mo as the cops arrive to the scene.. in complete shock at my baby being totally demolished on the front end.. all the clear corners and altis grill and PIAA lights all going down the drain in my eyes..

Turns out this is not his 1st rearend (had one very recently) and now is telling me he is not "Sue" Happy but his back sure does hurt.. i'm thinking "so does mine ahole but there's nothing i can do about it"..

Waited about 3 hours for the tow truck to FINALLY arrive, towed it to a local Toyota Body shop.. the guys there are pretty cool; they painted my grill to match when i originally purchased.

So the baby rolla is sitting there overnight now; hopefully will still be intact in the morning and the advisor will hopefully be as cool in person as he was on the phone (aka.. "We'll do our best to get the insurance to pay for your grill & whatnot since it should be back to the condition it was in before the accident").. Lucky me, I took a ton of pics BEFORE the accident so I can prove what I had done..

Long and short, thought I'd share my sad story.. i am very down.. thankful I am not hurt worse and car is not totaled but still a sad day. Although it does make the small scratch i have on the back bumper almost non-existent..

My funny boyfriend took my front bumper off (which has a large baseball sized hole in it from the pickup's tow hitch) and put it on my garage stall saying "See, your car is here in memory!"

So for now it's driving my sister's 99 Accord but I guess it will have to do until I can get back my rolla in hopefully 3 weeks.. It'll definitely be strange, knowing your car has been in this bad of shape and how good can it possibly be after it's been fixed?

We'll see I guess .. but I will give Toyota this.. the frontup was mashed up *mainly due to the other guy's tow hitch* but the frame really did not bend much.. I would've expected more crumpling and damage but I guess my 6:30am appointment tomorrow at the body shop will see how much damage there truly is once the hood is popped.

I'll keep you guys updated.. May need a Altis grill quick!

If I recall correctly, the airbags will only deploy when the sensors (placed behind the bumpers) sense a collision at greater than 35 mph. Assuming you were going 40, saw the truck and hit the breaks, this probably dropped your speed to almost 35, and when the bumper took the initial impact the car slowed to below 35 before anything got to the sensors.

Airbags actually cause a few minor injuries, and so they shouldn't come out unless they are absolutly needed (high speed impact) where the minor injuries are minimal to what the major injuries could be.

Sorry to hear about your car though...I'd prob cry if my corolla was down and out.

Man that really sucks ...glad to hear your ok though

Sorry to hear about it, but at least your ok.

Ya I have my own rear-ending story. NOT EVEN CLOSE to the kind you had, but I figured Id share it anyway.

WE are pulling out of the school parking lot. I see him lurch forward so IM like 'ok hes going, ill get going (to 10-15) and start looking for traffic'. So im looking left but when I look back hes still there. I hit the brakes but im into him at somewhere around 15+ mph. Obviously this was alot slower than ur accident, and cant really be compared.

The funny thing is there is no real damage on either car. Not even a dent or scrape on mine, and i think he is going to make me pay 30 or 40 for new paint (I chipped some paint off his car I guess, he just wants touch-up paint). I was really suprised there wasnt more damage, and so was he.

I was down for about a week, but after that it just happened and Im not really pissed off about it anymore. Im just glad he was someone i knew, and not an asshole sue person.
Good luck with ur asshole.

im telling you man. Corolla owners are cursed :?. I have seen to many accedents and cars being totaled on this site more then any other forums i go to.

LOL, couldn't be more true. I've had a total of 5 "accidents" happen to my car, 2 people rear ended me including my girlfriend and 3 other which were my fault but didn't really involve other cars.

You'll always get the car back, just be glad you still have your health.

heh yep. But i didn't get my car back.... Lets just say front axles snaped, front suspention shuved back, big dent on the side of my car.

about 2 months ago a guy was drivning a rolla in the morning. He lost cotnrol of the car and went over a brick embankment into the side of a bank. He went right through the bank wall, and managed to hit the ONLY room with people in it. As it happened there was 5 people in the room having their "Before work meeting". One girl got crushed under the car and dies later. 2 or 3 others had severe burns from the spewing rad fluid as they tried to pull the girl out.

In the end only the one girl died, but the driver just got his license taken away, and that was it.

Yeah... many of us have been there already, in my case it was the other way around. I was rear ended stopped at a light. But I really don't know whats worse, to see that you made a mistake and destroyed your car or to see your car destroyed when you were just waiting for a light to turn green. Hopefully everything will turn out alright with you, don't worry much about the car, if you're ok; then the car did a good job at taking the hit and thats the way it should be.

well the bad news first:

Insurance adjuster called. They are totally out the car. Guess after pulling it all apart, they were looking at 10K worth of damages and they figured cheaper to just pay me out. Of course, they aren't giving me anything for my $400 tint or my TRD springs or my grill, although they told me I am free to remove them and put the OEM back on..

The good news I guess is that I can now get a new car (again). Question is, do I go back and get an 04 or used 03 to save on cash or do I wait a few months and get a 2005? Or get a Scion?

Tough questions.. I'm leaning towards getting a 04 S.. Mine was silver (too common of color around here) and they have it in White on showrooom floor. ALthough of course, the check cut to me isn't going to be enough to cover the full cost of the car.

Id go for the new scion tC but thats just me.

I also think the 9th gen Rollas are cursed in some way too. There have been tons of people on this board that have either gotten into an accident of some kind or have actually had there car stolen.

Im starting to beleive this more because I myself have had a pretty bad accident in my rolla, and in fact I just got it back last saturday, which was feb. 14. So ive only had it back for a week now.

Ok guys this is a long story but i think you will 'enjoy' it if you read it.

It was December 26, the day after Christmas. I was sitting at my house, bored as usual. So I decided to take a drive up the mountain just for something to do. (I live in a small town right at the base of a small mountain range that sits to the west of us. Its Buffalo, WY if anyone is interested in checking it out on a map.) So I cruise about half way up to the pass (pass is the top of the mountain for anyone who dosnt know, lol) and I decide to turn arround and head back down because its starting to get late in the afternoon and i didnt want to drive back down in the dark. So im about half way back and theres a somewhat shart S turn that opens up into a steep downhill straightaway. I was takin it slow through the S turn and then i slowed way down to get a look at these 4 runners that are parked off the road in some deep ass snow, just admiring there offroad capability. (keep in mind the roads arround here are never busy, because Wyoming is very sparcly populated, so its ok to stop on the road and gauck at things.) So then I driving again, out of the S curve and start breaking into the straight away, Im hard on the throtle shifting into 3rd (gota hear the sound of that TRD Intake every chance you get right) doin about 50 and then i remember theres one more 'somewhat' gentle corner before you completely get into the straightaway. (this corner gets me every time, even in the summer when im haulding down the mountain i forget about this one corner, but usually its dry so i can just stick on the pavement all the way through) But not this time. Im going too fast for the conditions (its winter and the road has icey patches all over) and i knew if i hit the brakes (corolla, no ABS of course) I would end up sliding even worse, so i decide to try and hug the inside and try and get the car slowed as much as posible before hitting the corner. I made it through the corner, but my rear end slid out from me and I began fish-tailing all over the place comming into the straightaway. (if I hadnt had all the practice from pulling those E brake cookies the accident could of been much worse) So im fish tailing down the roads going to both sides back and forth, over correcting just a little each time which causes the slideing to get worse and worse and I finally loose it. The car slides about 40 feet through a snow filled ditch, sideways of course, passenger side first, I take out a linear post, and the wheels finally start to dig into the snow and the car rolls over onto the roof. The wierd part is that when i was sliding on the wheels, the front of the car is facing away from the road. When i crawl out of the car the front is facing the road, so somewhere in all this cahos i pulled a 180 too, lol. I wasnt wearing my seat belt, but the whole crash was just kind of in slow motion, when i felt the car start to roll i kept one hand on the wheel and just put the other hand on the roof to brace myself. Then the car rolled and everything was kind of a blur, the next thing I remember im sitting on the roof of the car, looking at a f'ed up windsheild and the front 1/4 or the roof is dented into the car about a foot. So im like shit. I reach up, turn the car off (lol, ya it was still running), pull the key out, and then open the drivers door and crawl out. My car plowed through the ditch about 5 or 10 feet more on its roof. (its all snowy so the roof was basicly like a sled) So I crawl out and im in freakin knee deep snow, I walked onto the road and got my cell phone out of my pocket and tried to call my house to tell my mom what had happened, but service is shity on the mountain so i lost the call right after it started ringing.

Well Ill spare you guys the rest of the story, its pretty boring after that, some people stoped and gave me a ride to town and i went and talked to the highway patrol guys to file an accident report. And had to pay a $25 fine for not wearing my seat belt, which kinda pissed me off (come on, i just rolled my freakin car and your giving me a fine for not having my seat belt on) In the end I am very happy with my Rolla thou, she kept me safe, I came out without even a scratch or a bruise, not even any small pains or sore spots or anything. The funny part is that i was in deep enough snow that it didnt break EITHER side mirror, and it didnt break the antana on the back, and i still got that big ass one that comes stock, lolol.

Ok im tired of typing now, so thanks for reading my long ass story guys, sorry it was so long but i dont like to leave out details as you might see.

PS. Rosebaby, im sorry for interupting your post. Im glad to hear you came out with minor injuries, and i know how you feel to see your little rolla baby all smashed up, lol, ya it sucks. Sad that they had to total it thou, but your probably better off anyway, the car will never be as good as new again. I kinda wish they would of totaled mine but the est. was only $7500 to get it fixed. The body shop said it came to about 8100 when they were finished with it, so i had to pay my 500 deductable and insurance paid the rest.

Oh ya one more thing hehe, Somehow in the accident my TRD muffler got completely F'ED over so that was like 450 bucks down the drain. But I got the shop that was fixing my car to just give me a check for the ammount of a stock muffler so I could just put that toward buying another aftermarket. I went with the magnaflow exhaust system so i only had to pay like 60 bucks for it since i had the money from the stock muffler that they would of put on the car.

So sorry again for the long a$$ post guys but i just had a lot of stuff to get off my chest.


Trevor

Yeah i got hit by someone speeding while i was taking a left hand turn. $6100 later the car looks good as new though.

good god. :shock: ....

Well the guy with the totaled car this is what you should get a nice "used" car. I was sad and glade my corolla was totaled. I was sad becuase it was a nice new car and i loved that thing. But then.....i don't becuase of the car payments. Now i own a 90 240sx with no car payments. Which im kinda glade i don't have. But if i ever buy another toyota it will be a last gen celica or a supra. I meen hell supras are as expensive as corollas now.

Add me to this list of accidents.....I had a very similar experience as Rosebaby.....Driving down the expressway @ 65, and everyone slams the brakes to a dead stop for no reason.

well i know it wa an accident but i personally have no sympathy for you right now since it was your fault. I am sorry if i sound cold but i am still bitter and mad that some asshole rear ended me while i was parked at a stoplight. and my back still hurts. Just hope that guy doesnt press any charges against you though for neck, back or whiplash injuries, or your insurance rate is going to fly through the roof