Had a bizarre accident!!

[lee20vt]

Hi guys,
Ive recently sold a couple of my cars and dipped into my savings to buy myself a 2004 BMW 730D sport to use as my commuter. I had it 7 days when a bizarre incident happened which wrote the car off!

I was crawling along out of a local BP petrol station when there was a huge bang, the car suddenly lifted and it felt as if I had ran over something big, like a wheel or something. I jumped out of my skin and my knee whacked the steering wheel! I immediately stopped in a state of shock and then heard my 18 month old son started crying who sat in his car seat on the back seat. I looked out of my side window to see one of the long narrow grids/rain covers from the edge of the forecourt was in the middle off the road and so thought I had ran it over and that it had struck the underside of my car. I then pulled over, shaking like a shitting dog and opened the door to see fluids dripping from the underside and so immediately returned onto the forecourt as I thought that something was damaged on the car and so I needed to investigate as well was make BP aware.
It wasn't until I then opened the door on the forecourt in all the light that I then became fully aware of what happened! One of the drain covers had somehow became lodged under the car, lifted the car off the floor before penetrating the floor pan and was wedged inbetween my accelerator pedal and the bottom of the A pillar! As you can imagine there was plastics smashed/twisted/bent etc. People who were filling there cars up at the time came over to see what had gone on as they must of seen/heard what had happened!
I sorted my son out and then got the manager out, who apologised and proceeded to fill out an incident report.
I was amazed by what had just happened and began to think how worse things could of been, had it entered the car just a few inches over.







The car has been written off and I am currently going through the process of suing the garage via a solicitor. They are currently denying liability so it's going to end up in court in the next month or so! It happened on Friday 13th Sept! Spooky!

[stuvy]

That is weird!

Hopefully the garage CCTV picked it up and youl be able to use that in court

[missfire]

Holy sh*t!! Never seen that before!

[Nierca_Quattro]

I cannot believe that! WTF????? Once I had a roadsign pole penetrating my van trough underneath, right into the bottom of my seat! I was lucky...

[sam]

holy shit, very lucky it wasn't lodged in your foot or your arse!!!

[Hanuman]

Make sure the car doesn't disappear anywhere until AFTER the entire claim is resolved

[lee20vt]

Don't worry it's well wedged and is unlikely to fall out! On the flip side if they do pay me out for the car which I can't really see there being much arguments against if it goes to court then it gives me the cash to get my 90 Quattro painted! Every cloud and all that! Finger crossed anyway!

[stuvy]

Originally Posted by lee20vt

Don't worry it's well wedged and is unlikely to fall out! On the flip side if they do pay me out for the car which I can't really see there being much arguments against if it goes to court then it gives me the cash to get my 90 Quattro painted! Every cloud and all that! Finger crossed anyway!

What he means is keep te car I. Your possession and don't let them take it. You can request an inspector/assessor comes out to view the car rather then having them take it and you never seeig it again not getting your money!

[lee20vt]

It's already been assessed and repair costs estimated. It's a friend of a friend who's put me onto the solicitor who is sorting it all out and yes I'm keeping the car once the claim is sorted out. It's currently being stored in my friends yard so is going nowhere. I was given the option after the assessment. Either a set figure or a lesser figure and the car back so I am keeping the car. It looks a generally easy repair. The only bad thing is that it is going on a category C write off!

[Ben]

Blimey!!

Glad you and your son are ok