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Comments
In a way, I cannot wait until I get this thing winterized and give it my wife (probably on Monday). That way, I am back to my old Escort (which as a fairly smashed windshield) and it is her concern rather than mine.
Never heard it called that.
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I remember my Dad calling them that when I was just a tyke back in the late '60's.
And to top it off, I parked in an urban area, so I had to parallel park on the street. No worries for me, I have eyes and know the size of my car, so I was able to squeeze it in. I came back to my car many hours later, and walked around it, looking for damage from other parkers. I felt the impact strips on my bumpers in the dark, all seemed fine. This morning I go to wipe the car down, and I feel an abrasion low on the rear bumper, below the impact strip. Now I have a crack in the paint about 5" long, and near it a small vertical scratch - like from a low license plate frame. I'm just thrilled. My deductible is $1000 too, and this should cost a fair deal less to fix, so it will have to be out of pocket. :mad:
And then driving around this morning - I think the sunny weather makes people drive slower and more oblivious than when it is icy. I saw a couple of vacuous trophy wives in Escalades - maybe they are sisters - talking on the phone and weaving around anywhere they wanted. Must be the mentality of that demographic. The out of sequence asininely planned traffic lights managed by our responsible and hardworking not overpaid and overperked public sector "traffic engineers" makes driving fun too. And then one of our beloved new residents in an early W210 decided to come to a complete stop in the middle of a 35mph road before turning, for no reason. I got to test the old car's horn on that one. Same for the [non-permissible content removed] in an Acura CL who blindly pulled in front of me on the same road, and expected me to slam on the brakes to allow him in, with nobody behind me. How can people miss that car?
The most inconsiderate thing that's happened to me all week was someone hogging a parking spot with two shopping carts at the Winco yesterday. I had to wait 20 whole seconds for her to rearrange them so I could pull in.
Small scrape on rear quarter of Cobalt, partly on rear bumper extension into the fender and partly lightly on the fender. The other bumper was flexible enough no metal damage. Some digging into the paint on the flexible bumper/quarter and paint rubbed to bare metal on the lip of the fender. School parking lot accident. New driver didn't realize the Explorer rubbed the Cobalt.
Later I told the parent/owner of the vehicle I'd guess it at $300-400. He guessed much higher. It was almost $900 to fix correctly.
Can cracks on your bumper be repaired or is that a replacement?
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
Here's my damage:
I know all about plumber-like repair prices from body shops, especially if you want a quality job. When I bought my car it had a nickel-sized ding in a low door panel area along a crease that I thought I could live with - other people never noticed it. After about 6 months it drove me nuts, so I went to get it fixed. I thought maybe $500. It was triple that :sick:
I remember a friend of a friend visited from LA several years ago, and some of the things he saw astonished him. Probably what set me off on this, was his notice of arbitrary traffic management - unsequenced lights, strange placement of lights, and weird 4-way stops.
Today I drove for a few miles and hit every single red light - and I was with the pack of traffic, not an outlier. The lights would take forever to change too, backing up 15-20 cars which is significant. Something about Sundays here, it's like they turn off the computers. I think our "traffic engineers" got their credentials from a diploma mill. What a sick waste of resources.
"Inrix is headquartered (near) Seattle and the worst traffic bottleneck in our city is directly across from our corporate headquarters -- so we're definitely feeling the pain ourselves, said Bryan Mistele, Inrix Inc. founder and CEO, in a statement."
Seattle area's traffic ninth worst in U.S. (Puget Sound Business Journal)
If it weren't so durn pretty and didn't have all those great restaurants, I'd never go there (free crash pad at the bro-in-law's helps too).
I have a crack on the side of my 98's front bumper. I might try to repair it with epoxy this winter just to see how long it lasts. Car has 170,000 on it, so I'm not too interested in fixing it at a high price.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
For an older car, I wouldn't worry too much yeah. On this car, it is now the big cosmetic flaw and might impact value.
I am thankful I live close to work.
Needs to be fixed right for a car with value like yours. On my Cobalt an independent shop bid higher than the dealers and wasn't going to remove the rear bumper to sand and repaint over the edges that aren't reachable without removal. (The whole bumper and body panel get clear coat.) The dealer I talked to was much more thorough. Removing the taillight to paint the black metal paint around them. Using double epoxy primer to cover the bare spots, and he talked about the filling in the rubbed spots on the plastic bumper, which are actually small. The dealer has always been professional beyond the call on earlier work on other cars.
Good luck.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
My deductible is $500 and the bill is about $ 2500. Small damage costs big bucks!
Hey Steve, we in CA "pride ourselves" in our discourteous driving and insane speeding. I have not been in Washington for a long time, but it can't be worse than a rainy day on the Nimitz freeway heading towards to Bridge toll plaza in commute traffic.
And fintail, I 100 % agree re: the night drivers, i.e. the "night people" which I learned quickly are reckless, deadly and irresponsible.
Good luck to all and stay safe as here in No Cal we hopefully will get the much needed rain this week.
jensad
I am not surprised by your story. When I was riding the shuttle van from the airport (Sea-Tac) to Carter Subaru in Shoreline, we ended up going over a bridge along the docks (sorry... I don't know the area very well!), down through some crowded business districts with all the skyscrapers to our right, then through all sorts of residential neighborhoods. Those streets were tight! There were walls of cars on each side, all parked bumper-to-bumper, with barely enough room for the shuttle van (an E-350) to fit down the middle. These were two-way streets! Most vehicles had their mirrors folded in, and I can see why. I swear we were not more than 8-12" from them on either side of the van.
I was very thankful I was only passing through.
There does seem to be a lot of narrow old fashioned residential streets there, built for far fewer cars, with modern drivers who don't know how to handle them.
Now picture that one beautified so you have trouble seeing oncoming traffic, and stick it one of Seattle's many steep streets.
People do get creative with them, and they are better than speed humps.
If you are in an RV or bus, you pretty much have to make left-hand turns in front of the circle.
One proposed here got shelved (wasn't such a great spot for one anyway). Another is in planning, but the 5 way intersection is so messed up now, the circle may wind up being a dog-bone (what they should have done was close a street, but there was too much resistance to that). (link - pdf file)
You'd absolutely detest NYC, where both of my sons now live. The outer boroughs have traffic lights that seem to be deliberately unsynchronized to keep speeds down. And even where two narrow streets intersect, the red lights last SO long. I can see the need for long reds on Queens Blvd, which is 10 lanes wide (2 service lanes and 3 through lanes on each side), to allow pedestrians to make it all the way across. But then you get the green and the very next light turns red. So frustrating.
And street parking -- well it's generally free, but there are no marked lines on the pavement, so you get to squeeze in as tightly as possible. The once-pristine rear bumper cover of my '04 Camry now has numerous dings and scrapes from being hit by front license brackets of cars behind me. You should see what 10-year-old "native" NYC cars look like -- their rear bumpers are literally in tatters.
I think the best car for the mean city would be a small SUV with metal bumpers and steel wheels -- maybe a Jeep Wrangler if you can stand rattling your teeth over every pothole.
If I had to live in NYC, I would never own a nice car unless I had a garage. Heck, even if I lived in a less densely crowded area yet lacked a garage, I'd probably lease a normal car and not worry about the OCD style cleanliness I give my car today. A Jeep or an old truck/basic SUV would be good for that area, yeah.
I suspect a lot of poor light sequencing in commercial areas is some half-arsed public sector ideal of slowing people down to make them take notice of local businesses. It's almost too dumb to simply be a lack of sequencing, it sometimes really does seem deliberate.
It's amazing the house ended up supported on both ends, evenly. It looks like a Frank Lloyd Wright home that has a creek running under it.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
It was an email making fun of engineers specifying using that bridge.
I'm happy it added some levity to the thread!
All I can imagine is what the guys (engineers?) standing watching the move over the bridge actually said when it started to break!!!
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
Pretty inconsiderate, considering the next bridge is probably a ten mile detour.
Pretty funny photo, especially your comparison to the Fallingwater house. I should paddle my canoe under it and call it a first descent under a trailer. :shades:
2011 Hyundai Sonata, 2014 BMW 428i convertible, 2015 Honda CTX700D
"I don't know, honey. Let me check the basement."
Well if you had a good off road vehicle you could just go around it.
2011 Hyundai Sonata, 2014 BMW 428i convertible, 2015 Honda CTX700D
Yes, I'm sure the house did suffer some serious damage. If you look at the roof, near the middle, you can see that the sheathing is a little buckled. The I-beams supporting the house can flex, but the structure itself is not going to be so happy to oblige....
The email joke I got was poking fun at engineeers for not asking what a house weighed. And for not asking what the bridge could hold.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
I'll bet that Chinese drywall flexes just fine! :P
We have a modular home manufacturer within a few miles of here. Occasionally we'll see certain of their models rolling down our back highways because of height limits on the interstate on overpasses. But none of ours have the garage attached. That would be a separate module.
I still laugh to myself about what the people in charge were saying to themselves or outloud as this started to go badly wrong!!!
And how much does it cost to replace a bridge? Is that covered under property damage on the truck's insurance pulling the thing?
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
In inconsiderate news, I cut off a motorcycle heading to the airport this afternoon. I had my lights on, why didn't he? Didn't even see him until I had almost completed my turn, but fortunately he was a good ways from the intersection when I went right on red.
I am not sure that that is a modular home. It looks like it could be a regular house that for whatever reason was being moved.
2011 Hyundai Sonata, 2014 BMW 428i convertible, 2015 Honda CTX700D
2011 Hyundai Sonata, 2014 BMW 428i convertible, 2015 Honda CTX700D
http://www.snopes.com/photos/accident/housebridge.asp
Hmmm.... it's real.
I always referred to it as the "Chicken Lane". And interestingly, the one Chicken Lane I've been most familiar with here in Maryland is on Route 1...the same road that runs to Key West, I believe!
Yesterday a friend of mine's car was hit-and-ran while parked in front of his house, while he was at work. 03 Accord...he thinks it will be totaled. He sometimes exaggerates, but he claims a rear wheel is pretty vertical now.
Now that the rain is back here, I swear traffic is actually moving better on surface streets. The SUV and pickup crowd dawdles less and drives faster in bad weather.
If the house was stick-built, rather than modular, then it's really not designed to support itself without a solid foundation. Therefore, they probably have to put a beefier, heavier trailer under it than they would with a modular home. And you can move a house with all the furniture in it as well. At least, that's what they told me when I looked into having my house moved back from the road a few years ago (never did it, because I figured the moment I did, the county would try to widen the road).
That is a huge house, too! I imagine with the garage it must be close to 100 feet long. I'm surprised they didn't put more than just one tandem axle per side, just to distribute the weight a bit.
No Chicken Lanes here but we do have a Chicken Dinner Road. Not to be confused with Chicken Gristle Road in Texas. (freakstreets.com)
Remember the story of the Brooklyn Bridge when it was first built? In order to garner public confidence in the bridge's strength, PT Barnum (I think) paraded his elephants over the bridge. Apparently it was quite the spectacle, but the weight of those elephants was a drop in the bucket compared to the loads that bridge sees in modern times....
Of course, it's a bit less severe than he described...but that has to cost. He says the car was also pushed into the curb, and the wheel on the other side is scraped. As it is an 03 with over 100K on it, I think it could still be close to a total.
And on my idea of wet weather making people drive faster....dry commute today, and ridiculously slow drivers. I don't know who I liked more, the old man in the Toyota pickup going 30 in a 45mph flow, or the Louisiana plated Pilot with an 90lb housewife driver yapping on the phone, in the left lane, going 5-10 under as she weaved around. The gene pool needs chlorine.