Did you damage your first car?

I am just curious to know how many of you damaged your first car in some way, whether it be something little or a write off, I would like to hear your stories. I am still on my first car (Passed my test and got the car in March), I have already scraped the side abit when trying to get into a tight space, cracked my bumper on a wall (Just don't ask how :smile:

) and curbed it once, I like to think I have done alright haha, but anyways, share your stories!

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Reply 1

New Foil

I reversed my first car into a wall just 3 weeks into having it. It was scratched and dented :/

Reply 2

Trust Orang

No, but I suck at driving anyway, so I'm always super-cautious.

Reply 3

1Hunnid

Yeah a few times lol

Hit a parked car while reversing at like 2 mph.

Then hit the back bumper again somewhere.

Then was driving along a tight road and scratched a car.

Then scraped like 3 cars while driving fast and saw a car other side so it meant I scraped a few cars.

Reply 4

FightToWin

A couple of scratches here and there. Might buff them out sometime, I've heard toothpaste works quite well?

(edited 5 years ago)

Reply 5

dickwhittington

Kerbed an alloy but in my defense, some idiot cut the corner so I had to swerve out of the way

Reply 6

TheMcSame

I clipped my wing mirror backing into my garage once. Took a bit of casing with it and put a small dent in the side of the garage, that's about it really.

I've done a few minor things that haven't resulted in any damage.

Going through a tunnel of cars, a bus failed to give way (I had nowhere to go and was already a good distance through the make-shift tunnel), we both come to a stop about 3/4 the way through, I slowly inch my way down the side of the bus, being careful not to scrape it, but I neglected to consider the left side and dragged my mirror a few cm down the window of parked car (Maybe dragged is a bit too strong, it wasn't even enough to fold my mirror in). From there, I let the c*nt of a bus driver do his thing, knowing that if I were to move much further, I'd end up clipping the wing mirror of the car I had already contacted. Was gonna stop and look for damage, but by the time I was at a spot that was safe to pull over (which would've been at the end of the 'tunnel' and then a decent bit down a side road), I had completely forgot which car I had contacted. From what I was looking at during the moment, there didn't seem to be any visible damage, so I didn't take it any further. If it were my car that was parked, and there was no damage, whatever, I'd let that slide.

Then another time I did something that... Honestly, I really don't understand how I did it. But I was driving to the nearest co-op while on my break, and on the way there, there was some road works, the sign on my side of the road was flat on the floor, faced down, I didn't see it at all. Slowed down to give way to a bus coming through the same tunnel of cars mentioned above, and as I got down to about 15 MPH or so... *jolt* *Thud* *jolt* *Thud*. If it wasn't obvious, I ran it over. Like I said, it was flat on the floor, face down (back side facing up), I didn't see it, how? Idk. When I was closer I would've been more focused on the tunnel of cars and what was coming down. But even coming up to, not once did I see the sign on the floor. Much like the previous one, no damage. Well, not any that I've noticed, maybe some scratches on the lower bits of the body work? But with it being a black car, you don't tend to notice light scratches.

(edited 5 years ago)

Reply 7

cbaforcba

Original post by Blackpanther93

I reversed my first car into a wall just 3 weeks into having it. It was scratched and dented :/

Oh wow haha, was it bad, I presume you could still drive it though?

Reply 8

cbaforcba

Original post by FightToWin

A couple of scratches here and there. Might buff them out sometime, I've heard toothpaste works quite well?

HOW?!?! haha

Reply 9

cbaforcba

Original post by dickwhittington

Kerbed an alloy but in my defense, some idiot cut the corner so I had to swerve out of the way

When I did it, it was 100% my fault, just lost track of my road positioning and obviously was way too close to the curb. I just told my dad that a lorry was parked up on the right side and as I was driving through, an oncoming car tried to squeeze through for whatever reason causing me to hit the curb trying to swerve away, don't think he would've been too bothered if I said what had happened, but he was the one paying for it, didn't want him to think I was a bad driver :biggrin:

Reply 10

cbaforcba

Original post by TheMcSame

I clipped my wing mirror backing into my garage once. Took a bit of casing with it and put a small dent in the side of the garage, that's about it really.

Last two stories sounded crazy! My friend picked me up literally 2-3 days after he passed and as we were driving up a narrow-ish road, he clipped the wing mirror of another car parked on our side, he knew what he had done straight away so turned into the next road and pulled over to collect his mirror and speak to the driver of the car who's wing mirror he had clipped, the guy said that he had phoned the police as he thought we were going to drive off. The guy was obviously very annoyed at first, but when he learned that my friend had just passed etc he was very understanding and said about how he wrote of his mums car after he had passed himself! The guy said that the wing mirror would cost to fix and received £200 from my friend (well his parents anyways), obviously the wing mirror would've only cost half of that, but he really didn't want to go through the whole insurance policy process for a genuine accident which is why my friend didn't complain about the guy wanting more than necessary.

I had said to my friend before about how potentially the guy was in the wrong as the road was unbelievably narrow for a 2 way road with cars parked on both sides, he could've maybe checked at bit more before pushing his wing mirrors out because he said that he had literally just got into the car and pushed his wing mirrors out etc.

Reply 11

xDron3

Curbed my car at 60mph in the 3rd day of driving. £230 worth of repairs needed.

Bumped into the back of someone a couple months ago.

Scratched my alloys many times when learning how to properly park and knowing my car dimensions.

And also my car was smashed into and stuff was stolen so had to replace glass and lost items.

Ain't driving Fun. Still gonna come out with a years NCB though somehow.

Reply 12

lyndseybx

Scraped the front passenger door on a bollard while parking in a tight space. It cost £264 in repairs. Not my best moment...

Reply 13

FightToWin

Original post by cbaforcba

HOW?!?! haha

When I left work the weather was fine, along the road the temperature had dropped like a stone and there was black ice. On an N bend. On a national speed limit road. And a big wall stopping cars from going into a nearby embankment.

Reply 14

New Foil

Original post by cbaforcba

Oh wow haha, was it bad, I presume you could still drive it though?

No it’s wasn’t bad lol and yeah I could still drive it but I was still devastated

Reply 15

PTMalewski

I crashed mine pretty badly, like most of my school-mates.

The second I took for some autocross events, didn't crash it there, then a couple of years without an accident, and last year again had minor crashes- but this was largely because there was an exhaust failure I didn't notice at first. The fuses were going inside the cocpit, slowly enough I couldn't really smell them because my nose was getting used to it before there was enough of them to notice, but it was making me dizzy and incapable of thinking or reacting properly- mechanically it was a silly little problem, but potentially very dangerous one. Have it sorted out now.

Reply 16

howitoughttobe

Original post by cbaforcba

) and curbed it once, I like to think I have done alright haha, but anyways, share your stories!

Misjudged how much time I had to pull out on a mini roundabout, got T-boned by another car. Had to replace the wing, tyre and have the door pulled back into shape. Cost me £500 :cry:

Reply 17

God Is A Woman

Technically I didn't damage it. My car was parked on the main road and I didn't push the wing mirror in because I was too afraid to at the time. I should have because a car clipped it and smashed the mirror :/ thankfully that was it and the casing of the wing mirror could just be slotted back into place.

Reply 18

TheMcSame

Original post by God Is A Woman

I don't really see why you'd be afraid to push a wing mirror in. Those things can really take quite a beating.

Reply 19

TheMcSame

Original post by cbaforcba

Eh... The second one was kinda crazy. The first one, at this point, doesn't surprise me at all. Bus drivers around my parts really don't give a sh*t, they'll force their way in/out and do whatever they want really.

I've had a few near misses as well...

I've been cut off about 5 times on the same roundabout, because people are going into the right lane to go ahead, then moving over to the left lane on exit, despite the fact that both lanes go ahead, and the markings are very clear.

A few months back I was going to work, at one point I'm sat at some traffic lights, as I'm about half way through the junction, I notice blue lights approaching fast as hell. It was ambulance, they blew through the red light without even slowing down (keeping in mind that, even though they are on call, they must give way at red lights until it is safe to go), and the only reason I knew they were there, was because it was 5:30 in the morning and dark as hell. Had it been light out, I'm almost certain they would've run into the back of me. "But didn't you hear the siren"... Yeah... About that... They didn't have the siren on at all, just lights.

I've had a few people just blindly open their car door in front of me, one guy nearly got his door taken off, I was literally right on top of him when came to a stop. There was just barely enough room for him to shut the door. He turned round and jumped. He had no clue I was there... A few seconds earlier? I would've taken his door off and most likely broken a leg. I was close to the parked cars, but my speed was low since I was turning just shortly after where this occured.

So for these next two, I'm going to throw in a bit of info here. When I say PPT, this is exactly what I mean:

Spoiler

I've also had a few close calls at work. Once I was driving through the racking on PPT with a pallet I clipped a pallet in the racking, and nearly hit the racking itself. For reference, I had just pulled this pallet out of the racking, so it was at it's widest. The measurements of a UK pallet are 1200mmx1000mm. The width of the aisle is roughly 1600mm...

The next close call at work, again, I was driving through the racking on a PPT to get a pallet out, and someone walked out from the fire aisle (which aren't supposed to be used, except in emergencies) in front of me, I stopped just short of them. Luckily for them, and for me (we're not supposed to take PPTs in the racking, but the mangers let us do it, it's a 'do at your own risk' thing', they let us do it, but if anything happens, it's our problem), I didn't have anything on the forks. Sometimes the pickers (including me) got a big pick of wardrobes and were loading pallets up with a bunch of them. A pick is 20 items. If you got unlucky and got all 64 KG wardrobes (the 78KG wardrobes were a lot thicker, you couldn't get 20 on a pallet, and yes, this would happen from time to time), you were talking almost 1.3 Tonnes. We didn't have the equipment to deal with heavy wardrobes, if the weight distribution wasn't spot on, you couldn't move it with a manual pump truck, we got by with machinery because it could move it through sheer brute force. When you've got that weight on the forks of a PPT, you feel it, there's a noticeable change in acceleration and braking, if I had been moving a monster pallet like that, the guy may well have been killed, or at the very least, severely injured.

But if you think those are crazy, how about this... There were some small roadworks going off on the street that comes off my street (if that makes any sense to you at all), right on the T junction to the main road. It was a 3-way system. The main road was clear, it was the side road that had the blockage, so the traffic lights were set up so that the two lights on the main road were synced, and the light in the junction, obviously, showed the opposite.
So one morning, I set off for work, I get to the traffic light and it's red. So I wait. It goes green, I set off, pull out of the junction, then next thing I know I've got two cars flying down the road, with one of them laying on the horn. If it were one car, I'd put it down to a red light runner. But two cars, that didn't seem like typical boy racer cars? That's fishy.

Turns out someone must've switched the lights, because the two on the main road were no longer synced. Instead, the one controlling the lane nearest the junction was synced with the one in the junction. Had I set out just a few seconds later, I would've been hit and found at fault, as I'd have no witnesses to back up the fact that I had a green light, while the other driver did (the car behind). This wasn't that long ago either, after my insurance comes out, I'm 100% investing in a dash cam. Sh*t like that is the precise reason you need a dash cam these days. If I were a few seconds later, I would've been involved in a crash, had my car written off, could've possibly broken a bone (putting me out of work, as, at the time, the warehouse I was in involved a lot of heavy lifting, like 25-40 KG on a regular basis, with some 78KG wardrobes thrown in for good measure, with a sprinkling of sheds (weighing 60-90KG per box, most were in two parts) for good measure), and would've sent my insurance costs to a moon in another galaxy, or if I was really unlucky, I could've been killed, all because a few kids (I don't know who did it, but it's almost certainly some dumb kids) thought it'd be funny to switch some temp lights around.