There was a cop waiting at the light to go across and saw it all and immediately pulled around. He came over and was pretty calm and cool about things. Within another minute there were two more cops that showed up and were pretty cool too. Long story short, the first cop gave me a ticket for following too close (I hit a guy from behind... what are you gonna do?), but esitmated damage at 1000 to the truck and 2500 to mine so it's non reportable. He also told the kid that I wanted to do it out of insurance and talking with him I think it'll be fine. The cop didn't say anything about driving too fast, question if I'd been drinking or anything (to which I was dead sober).
So the damage.
The truck has about a 3 inch mark on his bumper that will probably buff out and his trailer hitch looked like it got bent down a tad, ~5 deg. I centered his hitch, as in you can see where the hitch was on my bumer and it's literally less than 3/4 off center.
My baby took a solid hit to the front but the hitch came over top my main bumper support beam by about an inch and grabbed the formed support above it and took it back into the radiator and tilted that back. No airbags though. My engine was still running right after the hit, though it took a really wierd idle so I immediately killed it. There were no fluids on the road though. It looks like the accesory belt is still intact and that the radiator didn't actually hit my engine. The hood folded up and back appropriately with the latch staying closed. Blew out the headlights and corner lights. Something on the underside of his truck cut my bumper in one place and started to on the other side but we seperated before it did. So the bumper itself I think is alright, though the foam inside is definately cracked and rotated. It bent the tips of the corner panels in, just the front 3 inches, and I think they can be hammered out to well enough. It doesn't look like the main structural stuff took a hit which is good. My mechanic's/body shop is going to take a better look this afternoon and let me know. Hopefully the damage won't be too bad and I'll work on the engine stuff myself along with small stuff, whatever it happens to be.
Frank, I'm sending you a PM.
Shit happens, I was going a little too fast and he decided to not wait until the one car in the 3/8 mi stretch to go by before pulling out, not to mention the proximity issue
, to stop for the yellow....I know it's only metal and money, but damn. What a kick in the nuts.
So any advice on things in particular to look for in fixing things?
