Re: Volkswagen Vento : Test Drive & Review Note - Am adding this post in this thread cause it has a lot to deal with the car itself and its dealership + roadside assistance.
Alas my 1 month honeymoon with my new Vento comes to harsh end temporarily. (My 14 year accident free driving streak coming to an end). I was traveling to Bangalore with my family a couple of days ago. We just crossed one of the toll plazas when a moron in a Hyundai (accent as my father remembers it) pulls perpendicularly into the NH from the roadside shops and took e a sharp left to be right in front of me (am in the inner most lane near the road dividers). Sensing a drunk driver i applied my brakes and slowed down but then this driver cuts off to the outer lane freeing up the road in front of me. So I take my foot off the brakes and allow the car to coast when the unexpected happened. He cuts sharply at a 90' angle to the right cause he wanted to take a U turn to the other side of the road. I was left with a car that is approaching me on the left lane (a micra) and this moron who cuts and stops in the junction (his rear end still in my lane). Either its a head on collision with this moron or if i swerve to my left it would be hit on the side with my front definitely banging up this moron. So I just slam the brakes hoping no-one rear-ends me with slightly turning to the left so that the impact is restricted to one side as much as possible. But considering that the entire episode probably happened in a span of 3 - 4 seconds I was left with no room for alternatives.
My baby got badly injured due to frontal collision. The entire bumper + headlights, side fenders on the driver side is completely damaged. From what I could see, the radiator is damaged but there seems to be no damage to the engine. The oil sump is intact but a lot of plastic containers and hoses on the driver side is damaged. The passenger side fenders and the rest of the car dont have any impact.
Fortunately none of us even had a scratch cause we were wearing the seat belts (interestingly the air bags did not deploy - am sure we hit him at least at 40 - 50kmph speed). Since my door was jammed , i lowered the window to take a look at the other and this guy takes off. He doesn't even bother to wait there for police complaint or at least take a courtesy check on what happened. The micra (who was on our left) did stop and waited for us to ensure him that we were safe. So we send him away assuring that all of us were in good shape.
Next the ordeal with VW tow and police starts. I call up VW asking for a flat bed and the guys asks me to talk to the dealer to ensure on police formalities. Abra motors as usual passed on my call to 6 - 7 different numbers before i blasted the hell out the last one when he tried to transfer the call. Luckily with an practicing high court advocate (read my wife) beside me we figured out the right jurisdiction (thanks to her advocate friends who did the background work from Chennai) & called up the police station. The cops who came to the spot checked on the accident and were compassionate enough as the car cannot be moved. So we went to the police station which was 8 kms away, filled a hit and run CSR got the relevant papers and came back to the spot. By that time it was 8:30. The accident happened around 5. In the mean time VW 24x7 road side assistance (which sucked by the way) dispatched my "flat-bed" truck around 6pm from Chennai !! (They asked if Chennai was near or Bangalore. With Chennai being 185kms away and Bangalore being 150 kms away I chose Chennai cause the home advantage was much better than the extra 35Kms. The flat bed truck turned out to be a tow truck driven by a kid (stupid VW, i told them i dont want the car towed and wanted to have a flat bed) who reached the spot by 10:30pm. So we put the car on tow and left the area around 11:30pm by a taxi that my family had arranged. We reached home by 2am and I got a call at 5am from the tow guy that he dropped the car at Abra Motors body shop.
I call up Abra next day morning who ask me to come and file the claims form. I head there and they make my wait for around 50 minutes before the SA turned up. He estimates around 1.5L worth of damage (rough estimate, cant determine until they open the bonnet - need to wait for the surveyor) of which i would have to pay up around 40 - 50K from my pocket(cause plastic parts like bumper and hoses are covered only 50%). I had specifically asked abra to do bumper to bumper insurance and they did not do it. I have partly myself to blame since in the excitement of getting the car I had failed to notice the kind of insurance they had done. Now with parts delivery taking about 10 days and the work around 10 days + all the tests they do post the work, it would around 3 - 4 weeks before I get the car !!! My baby had just 4868 kms on the ODO and only 40 days old and had to suffer the stupidity of some drunk moron.
But I am glad that my entire family safe thanks to the tough build of the car. I still cant take my mind off the fact that the air bags did not deploy. If it wont deploy at 40kmph impact what speed will it deploy in ?
A rough illustration, the blue car is mine, the red was the moron guy and the green was the micra which traveled besides us. The U-Turn spot where this happened can be seen in the second picture besides my car which is parked at the shoulder.
Last edited by SR-71 : 7th January 2012 at 13:22.
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