"Joe Isuzu" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@posting.google.com... | slightly offtopic, but what is the normal procedure in an accident for | something like the following: | | elderly man reverses his car (both cars standing in line on the road) | and hits my trooper front bumper, trooper bumper drops slightly with | visible gaps on both sides but has no cosmetic damage in the front | | police were called and along with witnesses at accident site, he fully | admitted to shifting into reverse and hitting my trooper | | once I get the official police report in a couple days, does his | insurance just pay for my repairs or is there something more to it? | | as far as I could tell visually, if the bumper brackets could be | straightened, the same bumper could be used or does the dealer usually | replace entire bumper? | | cost about $500 ? | | are there any other parts that may have sustained damage which is not | immediately obvious? it was a low speed hit but the sound was loud.
While eating dinner in a "nice" restaurant a little over a year ago, the restaurant manager came to the table and told me, quietly, that the valet parking attendant had wrecked my car. I thought that odd, since I had gotten there about fifteen minutes before the valet attendants showed up and had parked my (99) trooper myself and had the keys with me. The parking valet guy had let another car drift down a slight slope when he jumped out of it after not setting the parking brake sufficiently and that car drifted into my trooper. There appeared to be no damage when looking from "above". But the other car had struck the front bumper underneath on the passenger side and broken an aftermarket fog lamp, torn the (plastic? fiberglass?) bumper cover on the underside and in the corner of where the fog lamp inset is and damaged the right front fender slightly and, as I recall, the right under bumper and mount. The bumper looked very slightly "twisted" toward the passenger side when looking at it from down low.
My guess is that the other car was probably rolling at no more than 5 mph. Total cost was a little over $900, which the restaurant insurance covered totally, plus 4 days car rental for a car for me, which their insurance grumbled about but paid another $200 for. They said they didn't normally cover over 3 days so I told them to take that up with the repair place since I had no control over the garage schedule and just give me my money - I'd had to pay for the car rental initially - so they did reimburse me with no further trouble. The restaurant gave me a $75 gift certificate - basically only enough for one meal for my wife and I in this type place - which wasn't sufficient compensation for the aggravation of having to endure the repair process. As I recall, the bumper cover came to about $350-400 of the $900+ but I'm not certain about that. I think the cover was around $200 plus installation. I didn't really pay enough attention to the breakdown of the costs since I wasn't paying.
The "other" car was a junker sort of car and I'm not sure they could tell whether or not it had hit anything that night. It was all beat up from previous small "encounters". I couldn't tell where it had hit mine. The valet attendant showed me what part of the front had hit mine, but almost the entire front of that piece of junk had all the paint worn away and was not visibly damaged any further. They did replace both fog lamps on my trooper with a whole new set since they couldn't get a match. That was over $100 of the cost I think.
Chuck