About four hours ago, I got rear ended in the Silverado, by a guy doing about 30 miles an hour in a Jeep Wrangler. I was stopped to make a left hand turn. All of my tail lights were working, my turn signal was on, and I had a red LED strip underneath my tailgate lit up. He apparently didn't see me.
The Silverado isn't doing too well. The bed has been pushed forward into the cab. The tailgate is now crescent shaped (and was hanging by the straps), and the driver's side wall of the bed has been pushed out, and the floor of the bed is buckled. The rear bumper has been pushed in as well.
I've got a stiff neck and back, I'll be seeing my Chiropractor as soon as he can see me tomorrow.
I was hit so hard, that tools in the bed of the truck were broken. I have a cordless drill that is snapped into two pieces, and a battery charger with a busted case. Inside of the cab, absolutely nothing is where it was before. My sunglasses were laying under the rear seat (they had been on the dash). A portable Uniden scanner that was clipped to the sun visor was underneath the back seat as well.
I even had two sandbags that I had in the bed for extra weight bust open.
The only thing that helped, was when I realized that he wasn't going to get it stopped, was that I already had my foot off the brake, and had the gas pedal mashed to the floor (and had just started to move forward again) when he hit me. I had also yanked the steering wheel to the right, and ended up half way in the ditch (I didn't want him to push me into oncoming traffic traveling towards me at 55 mph).
Of course, he was ticketed by the State Police, and does appear to have insurance.
It could have been a lot, LOT worse. But when you can walk away from something like this, I'm not going to complain.
I'm really glad that I wasn't in something like a Chevy Cobalt or a Honda Civic.
The Silverado isn't doing too well. The bed has been pushed forward into the cab. The tailgate is now crescent shaped (and was hanging by the straps), and the driver's side wall of the bed has been pushed out, and the floor of the bed is buckled. The rear bumper has been pushed in as well.
I've got a stiff neck and back, I'll be seeing my Chiropractor as soon as he can see me tomorrow.
I was hit so hard, that tools in the bed of the truck were broken. I have a cordless drill that is snapped into two pieces, and a battery charger with a busted case. Inside of the cab, absolutely nothing is where it was before. My sunglasses were laying under the rear seat (they had been on the dash). A portable Uniden scanner that was clipped to the sun visor was underneath the back seat as well.
I even had two sandbags that I had in the bed for extra weight bust open.
The only thing that helped, was when I realized that he wasn't going to get it stopped, was that I already had my foot off the brake, and had the gas pedal mashed to the floor (and had just started to move forward again) when he hit me. I had also yanked the steering wheel to the right, and ended up half way in the ditch (I didn't want him to push me into oncoming traffic traveling towards me at 55 mph).
Of course, he was ticketed by the State Police, and does appear to have insurance.
It could have been a lot, LOT worse. But when you can walk away from something like this, I'm not going to complain.
I'm really glad that I wasn't in something like a Chevy Cobalt or a Honda Civic.
