Thursday 7 March 2013

well that's just great

So I blogged on Monday about how I had been hit by someone while driving a courtesy car, well I went out to my car yesterday lunchtime to find that someone has hit my proper car.

We're not talking major damage - it's a scratch on the rear bumper - but that's not the point.  Actually it kinda is - it's a small scratch so they've obviously just fucked off so that I don't demand they pay to repair it.

It's actually the second time it's been scratched on the bumper in that exact place.  I therefore suspect that it's the same idiot that's done it.  Indeed I actually suspect it's not happened at work at all, but it's the fucktard neighbours where I live.

I know they've already driven into my landlord's garage a couple of times.  Part of the problem is they're builders and both the houses next to us have had a lot of building work recently as well and builders are the exact archetype that is the wine van man - or "cunt in a van" as I like to call them.

Of course it could be at work it's happening - that's certainly where I notice it, but then that's where I see the car in proper full light and when I'm not tired.  If it is work my guess is it's people who go to the dump and don't find the right turn.  We're near the dump/recycling place and although clearly signed a lot of people miss it and end up having to turn around.

I'm surprised there aren't more accidents actually as the roads of the industrial estate have become chocked with parked cars.  It started last year after the big snow - I think a lot of people decided not to try parking in the proper car parks when it was snowy and then decided they liked parking on the road.  Certainly the proper car parks don't seem full yet there's all these cars.

Although saying that I think also they've been moved over from a neighbouring industrial park that has very little parking.  There certainly used to be a lot more cars parked on the proper roads than there is nowadays.

I seem to have really been in the wars with the car recently.

I don't think I blogged about it but a couple of weeks ago I was following a large articulated lorry (it's from a delivery company from the industrial estate and I've seen it a few times).  It was going down totally inappropriate roads, because it's shorter/quicker than using the main roads.

But for a big artic that also means he's slow so I was quite close behind.  Well, he went through a bit where there's some low-hanging trees (well, for an artic or a bus - they're not low for normal cars!) and he broke off a big chunk of tree that fell off and bounced off my bonnet.

In some ways I was lucky - it was a big piece and wood is quite dense so it would have been heavy and could easily have smashed my entire windscreen.  And of course in other ways I was unlucky, because it hit me and could easily have simply hit the road or whatever.  It's left a really noticeable dent in the bonnet but again, nothing that requires repairs, it just makes the car look beat-up.

Of course I considered an insurance claim, but unlike the hire car accident it wouldn't have been too difficult for them to say I was too close.  Plus it's not really his fault - the road doesn't ban wide/tall vehicles, so could they even argue it was the council's or the homeowners fault for not properly trimming the trees?

And speaking of windscreens, not long after the bonnet I got a stone chip on my windscreen.  This of course was just a couple of weeks before the MOT (chips above a certain size in certain zones of the screen are failures) so I didn't have a chance to get it looked at.  Small chips can often grow but this one seems stable.

As I say, my car is quite dinged up.  A lot of it comes from people in supermarket car parks hitting you with doors or bumping you as they manoeuvre (badly).  I always try to park out of the way in empty bits but that isn't always possible and doesn't seem to have helped.

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