Animal menace! Recently (about couple weeks after getting my new Baleno), I had a bit of a painful experience: collission with a dog on the outer ring-road in Bangalore.
I was doing around 60 on the right most lane - pretty close to the Intel office. There was a Sumo on my left (it was a little ahead of me). I heard the Sumo honk quite loud a few times and suddenly, dang, the stupid mangy creature leaps in front of my car..
It was about 5 feet away and from the last time I checked in the rear view mirror, I knew there was a BMTC bus not far behind me.. So, did not dare braking hard. And even while I was contemplating my options, with foot off the gas pedal, heard a thud - car collided with the dog.
I checked the rear-view mirror to find a large chunk of black plastic on the road. Realized something went seriously wrong :(. Managed pulling over in about 50 meters.
Got out of the car to find that a 1.5 feet chunk of the front bumper just broke off the car! Along with it, I could see some fluid gushing out of the bonnet.
First thing I did was walked back to the accident spot to gather the broken piece of the bumper and possibly a dead dog..
To my surprise, there was no dead dog. And in the 5 mins it took me to get there, some good samaritan even took the plastic off the road and dumped it on the side.
Figured that maybe the dog had an injury, but managed running off the road. Picked the remnants of my bumper, I sheepishly walked back to my car to evaluate the damage. I was feeling quite terrible.
Since I saw quite a bit of fluid gushing out the bonnet, I was prepared to accept the worst.. But tried starting the car.. everything seemed OK. On second check, found that the windshield wiper water tank also broke.. so, the fluid was really water..
That got me feeling a bit better. Went straight to Pratham to give them the car for fixing. (It was about 8:15 AM)
First, to my shock, the service reception was empty!!! Not a soul in site apart from the janitors. I used to give my old car for service at Solar (8AM seems like a bazar any day of the week at Solar!)
Anyways, waited my time till about 9 when some humanity started gathering in their offices. Only to find that they did not have bumpers in stock. So, the only choice I had was to drive the car that way for some time!
Interestingly, I was on my way to Pratham to get a bit of a tap-tap-tap kind of noise I heard from the engine while I was driving to work in the morning.
Having had no luck with a quick fix for the bumper (of course, it would have still taken couple days to paint it the same color and stuff.. ), I decided to have them check the tap-tap.. They opened the bonnet to find a dead rat about a foot from end - to - end. Of course, it was all mangled and beyond recognition! But, it caused some damage before dying. It chomped on the A/C and fan belts a bit. And the tapping noise was due to some loose fabric threads hanging off of the chomped parts.
Looks like in winters, they find some warmth in the engine compartmanent of cars.. that explains its presence in the car. And it must have dozed off nicely when I started the car in the morning, killing it...
Replacing the belts cost about 2 grand.. :(
Finally, I had the car ready by what seemed like eternity around 11.
I'd like to ask the rest of you guys - did you ever encounter a collission with a small animal (dog/pig/cat, etc) and see such damage?
I thought a dog may cause a crack in the bumper.. but having a chunk of it just break off like that.. either the dog was a super dog or do they equip these new age cars come equipped with toy-grade bumpers?
Anyways, I hope Maneka Gandhi is listening. The estimate for fixing the bumper back on is about 9K.
Will post my experience with the bumper replacement (got it done about couple days ago) later..
I was not sure what group to post this message to. I don't think it conforms to any of the already available post groups. Maybe miscellaneous experiences or something! |