This Spring we were driving home after a massive storm that dropped 2" in under an hour here is St. Louis. At an intersection near my house, I saw cars just stopped in front of the flooded intersection. I drive that stretch of road almost every day, and said "it's flat - the water isn't deep. We're going." Turns out I've missed the fact that it indeed sloped down... As we got to the middle, a wave of water comes up over the nose of the Astra. The car kept going, and we made it through.
I left my '68 Spitfire outside of a club one night with the top down, when I went inside there were stars out. 2 1/2 hours later, drip drip drip.
I then spent all day Sunday with a killer hangover taking the carpet etc out so it would dry. Spitfires have a cardboard transmission tunnel (really!) and it was of course done for. I had to cover it with fiberglass mat and resin.
Vigo
HalfDork
8/14/10 10:06 p.m.
Who's insurance? Who do you think is responsible for destroying your car, other than the 2 people in it? The guy behind you?
Here's a thought.
When you are behind someone on the highway, and you see the car in front of you hit a huge puddle of water and start to slide out of control, what do you do?
If you do not hit the brakes, and then manage to hit them going 20+ mph faster than that car is going, that makes you negligent because either a: You were not paying attention to the road in front of you, or b: You did not use a safe following distance.
Anyone who can't outbrake a hydroplaning automobile is either also hydroplaning (which im sure he would have mentioned), or is a complete idiot. Im tempted to think that if you also then make comments to the effect that you had nothing to worry about since you were driving an f150, you are even MORE likely to be an idiot.
If we were driving a cop car or a semi, that guy would NOT have hit us because he would NOT have felt like it was a good idea to maintain full highway speed even though we were decelerating and going sideways.. He made a very bad judgment call and so far everyone is expecting ME to pay for it.
Also, apparently during that flash flood there were 22 traffic incidents in 44 minutes, and when we all finally came to a stop on the highway there were 5 wrecked cars in the immediate area as a result of that giant puddle. I guess that means that that one puddle accounted for over 10% of the accidents during that storm, in a city of 2 million people. My fiancee may not be the world's BEST driver, but she certainly is not the lowest common denominator in this situation.
Was anyone cited for the accident? Did the driver of the F150 maintain his lane position?
Essentially if you are sliding out of control hit his car they are going to view it as your fault. If you are cited in the police report as causing the accident and there are no independent witnesses (ie not you or anyone in your car) to say otherwise the best you can hope for is for everyones insurance to cover their own damages.
Vigo
HalfDork
8/15/10 7:45 p.m.
Now see i was under the impression that if i was moving away from his car and he was in the lane behind me and hit me, that that would be because he did not slow down.
Suffice it to say that i have not yet figured out a way to make our car go from going straight forward at 50 mph, to sliding backwards and to the right, so i can attack someone behind me with my rear quarter panel.
To me, that seems to leave him coming up on us too fast and hitting us to be the only logical explanation for the damage to our vehicle.
To date, when i have seen drama in the lane in front of me, i have always decided to slow down in lieu of ramming. Perhaps this is why no one is about to sue me?
P.s. forgot to add that noone was cited. Cop was very busy not getting run over, and wouldnt let us cross the road to talk to each other because it was too dangerous.
Luckily nothing happened, though. My fiancee's best friend died in very similar circumstances a few years ago when after a wreck on a wet road she was standing near her vehicle and ANOTHER vehicle slid out of control, hit hers, and crushed her between it and a retaining wall. Considering there were 5 wrecked cars near where we were standing, this was a pretty immediate threat and the cop barely had enough spare attention to make eye contact with us.