I saw my second parking lot accident of the month on Saturday afternoon, prompting me to finally write about something I've been thinking on for a while. I was driving into a strip mall when I saw a minivan backing up 50 meters ahead of me. I was about to turn right, but I noticed an SUV to the right of the minivan with its reverse lights on, and just as I turned right and lost sight of them BANG, SUV thuds straight back into the minivan. Broad daylight, no obstructions, slow speed, etc. No excuses, really. Just someone backing up without so much as glancing into their mirrors or over their shoulder, since there was simply no way they could have failed to see the dark blue minivan sitting just feet behind their rear bumper.
We missed the inevitably apologetic and confused aftermath, but it reminded me of a question I've had in mind for months. Are Americans losing the ability to (safely) drive a car in reverse, or are bumpers just cheaper than they used to be?
I swear, any random group of 10 vehicles will yield 2 or 3 with large dents on their rear bumpers, usually on the corners, but plenty with a clear pole impression right in the damn middle. What's worse is that since we live in a rich area, most of the vehicles are less than five years old, and others probably get their dents repaired. Imagine if the cars were older, displaying every scar earned over their decade of life?
Is backing up without running into something really that difficult? You kind of expect that sort of thing from old people, but the cars I see with dents are usually piloted by young adults, who should, theoretically, be in their driving awareness prime. I think almost all of these problems are single car accidents too, or at least they're the fault of the person backing up, like Saturday's "SUV meets Minivan" incident. Getting rear-ended on the freeway is another issue, and one that generally causes substantial damage to both cars. I'm just talking about fender-benders here, especially of the single point of impact, leave a bumper caved in, type.
I've backed into poles twice in memory, but each time I hit them slowly enough to not leave a dent, and each time they were low posts, not visible through my back window. I should have remembered they were there each time, since I saw them when I got into my car, but once it was a yellow, knee-high post protecting a gas main ridiculously located in the center of a parking lot, and the other time I was maneuvering around a stalled Cadillac at a gas station, and thought I had a few inches more room than I did to back up and change my escape angle.
So yeah, no one's perfect, but I swear I didn't see dents like these, in such a substantial percentage of vehicles, in the old days. And contrary to my rhetorical question from a paragraph ago, I
know bumpers are better than they used to be. Most cars now have dent resistant molded plastic bumpers, which will take a hit and shrug it off. Remember those useless, headlight-reflecting chrome bars they used to put across the back of Ford and Chevy pickups? The ones that could sustain permanent dents from high speed encounters with a butterfly? That cost $1500 to repair if you so much as scratched them? I always thought those should be banned, and apparently they were.
But what's good news for the consumer in the car repair and bumper industry is a bad sign for driver competence, since if 2/3 of the bumper impacts don’t leave a visible dent, the people with mashed in bumpers must really be Helen Keller'ing it in reverse.
Speaking of, the sad story I've been meaning to tell for a few weeks relates to reverse problems. Malaya and me were heading to the local supermarket, and as we walked up we saw an old lady in a red Buick (or some similar old person sedan -- why they hired youthful Tiger Woods to endorse them is beyond me) starting to back out of a diagonal handicapped parking space right in front. Unfortunately for everyone involved, a semi old guy in a Mercedes was sitting right behind her, waiting for someone to cross the drive with a shopping cart. He saw granny backing up right towards his passenger door, and blew his horn, but she kept on going, very slowly, and crunched right into him.
Even over his horn we could hear him yelling, "What are you doing!" in a slightly comical accent. "Vhat tar yhou doo-hink!" he cried, then repeated it several times. Granny, clearly completely befuddled, pulled forward as Mr. Mercedes got out and walked around to inspect the damage. Here's where it got good/pathetic.
While he's standing there, behind the right rear of her car, bending over looking at his car, she starts backing up again! Again at about 2 MPH, basically idling backwards with the brake on. The guy doesn't see her, so focused is he on the dents she just put in his car, and she actually strikes his hip with her right rear bumper, bouncing him back before her left bumper bangs into his car again, deeply denting it about a foot further back than the first impact, thanks to the fact that Mr. Mercedes moved forward a foot before stopping.
Now he's screeching in shock, "Hey! What are you doing! Hey!" and banging on her trunk, action to which she responds by pulling forward, and trying to back up again! Again at less than walking speed, and again she thunks into his car, rocking it sideways on the springs. Mr. Mercedes runs around to the front of her car, and yells in the passenger window, which seems to finally register on her withered synapses, since she looks startled and pulls forward, then puts it in park and sits there looking shellshocked.
It was kind of funny at the time, but also depressing. The old woman was at least 75, and clearly not competent to operate a motor vehicle. You can imagine her not looking back, though it's a busy driveway and she was backing out of a diagonal spot right into the main thoroughfare. But twice? And a third time? She wasn't hitting a low target either; the guy's Mercedes was one of those crappy, Chevy-looking mid-1990s sedans, not some road-hugging sports car model. Granny clearly had no idea what was going on, and if there'd been children behind her car, or a kid on a bike, or anything, she would have just plowed right over them and driven away without ever noticing the carnage.
I'm sure she's got decent insurance, and nothing will really come of this incident; neither car was anywhere near disabled by the crash, though one might have been if she'd kept up her demolition derby action a while longer. However, I'm equally sure she'll probably lose her license, since she can't possibly pass a driving test at this point. And if you can't drive in California, or most of the US really, you're pretty well fucked. Public transportation is horrible to nonexistent here, and I can't see that feeble old lady carrying groceries more than twenty feet, much less home on the bus. She's either alone and completely dependent, or maybe her husband was even older and less capable, and she was taking care of both of them? In any event, her mobility is officially over, and while that's for the safety of the rest of us, it's still a sad end to a once-productive life.
We didn't see the whole aftermath, but when we came out of the store there was a cop there, talking with Mr. Mercedes (who had finally moved his car out of further harm's way). Granny remained in her car, sitting slumped in the driver's seat and contemplating the doom I spoke of in the previous paragraph. It was tragic, but at least she didn't pull one of those "80 y/o man confuses gas and brake pedals and mows down a sidewalk/farmer's market" fiascos. Granny's never going to drive legally again, but at least she's not going to jail.
The capper? Her bumpers weren't even dented by the incident. I'm sure there were scrapes, but his doors were softer than her fender. Which just goes to illustrate how poorly most younger people are driving, to mash in their bumpers when granny's survived her mistreatment.
Labels: driving
