I was in my first car crash last night. My grandparents had let me use their pretty much brand new Jeep Wrangler because the dealership I was trying to buy my Subaru from was really sketchy and tried to scam me out of my deposit money. So I went and picked up the Jeep two days ago. Last night I was driving down a pretty straight road at dusk and there was a bicycle pulling a pretty wide cart behind him. So I stupidly fixated on him to make sure I didn’t hit and kill him, which involved swerving around him a little because he had no lights and came out of nowhere. Unfortunately for me, there was a Cobalt stopped in front of me turning left into a business (no lights or stop signs) and I only noticed he had stopped after I was safely around the bike. It was too late, though, and so I tried to swerve to the right of him and slam on my brakes as hard as I could but I still clipped the right of his bumper with the left of my front. He couldn’t get out of the way because there was a car turning in front of him, so he would have t-boned the car and there was a car in the left lane so neither of us could have swerved over there to avoid each other.
Fortunately (thank god), no one was hurt. The Cobalt held up pretty good considering I smashed into him at 20 - 30 MPH with a freaking Jeep. He managed to escape with only a pretty big dent on the back of his car, but everything still seemed to work fine. The Jeep, on the other hand, is a little worse off. It’ll need a new wheel bearing (maybe? I’m not very mechanically inclined, so I could be wrong), and part of the front end was smashed and the turn signal is hanging off by it’s wire. Honestly, it’s not terrible. And my grandparents have amazing insurance, so I don’t think it will be too bad. I’ll be paying for any repairs because I feel straight up f**king horrible for wrecking their new car.
I managed to walk away with only a sprained/bruised wrist. I’m sore now after I’ve slept overnight, but I’m not too bad. WEAR YOUR DAMN SEAT BELTS! If any good comes out of this, it’s that I know I will never not wear my seat belt. If I hadn’t been wearing it last night then I would have definitely at least slammed into the windshield, if not go right through it. ALSO PUT LIGHTS ON THE BACK OF YOUR FREAKING BIKES. All of this could have been avoided if the biker had lights. I would’ve been able to see him without fixating on him, so I would’ve had enough time to brake before slamming into the guy in front of me.
So that wasn’t a good Monday, but I’ve had worse.
Edit:
We censor swear words now? That’s a surprise!