My first accident in 16 years: Dented my new Toyota Hycross automatic

By the time I realised my mistake, it was too late, and my car hit the Ford EcoSport behind me.

BHPian SafeDrive0107 recently shared this with other enthusiasts:

I have been driving for 16 years now and not once have been involved in an accident. As luck would have it, it happened in my less than one-month-old Hycross and it was totally my mistake! I attribute it to my lack of familiarity with automatic cars and electronic parking brakes.

Had to park the car on a road that was a little inclined and while parking, had to do a little bit of reverse and forward to get it in position. Just as I was about to find the right parking position, a thought crossed my mind - in a manual car we use the clutch and brake to ensure that the car does not roll back on an incline, what do I need to do with this car?

As I was thinking about this, the car was in reverse gear and maybe the thought distracted me. I wanted to move forward and the moment I took my foot off the brake, the car started moving back. At that point in time, due to all the thoughts running in my mind, I did not realize that the car is in reverse gear. I thought the car is moving back due to the incline, so I put my foot on the brakes and engaged the parking brake.

Since I wanted to move the car forward now, I pressed the accelerator and with the car in reverse gear, it moved back and banged into the car parked behind me. By the time I realized the mistake that I made with the car in reverse gear, it was too late and I had hit the car behind me. End result, a dent on my trunk door and a bit of damage to the front grill of the Ford Ecosport parked behind me.

I have my first service scheduled tomorrow and will get the damages fixed, not sure what it would take, just fixing the dent and paint or more. Will give an update once I meet the service center guys tomorrow.

Takeaways and questions from the incident

• Extremely painful to see this happen to your new car.
• I was thinking I am getting comfortable driving an automatic car and driving it is easy, never know what kind of challenges come your way till you get fully comfortable with the car.
• Still not sure if I am at an incline, is there a chance of the car rolling back (of course not when in reverse, but in drive)? What is the best thing to do if that happens? Any inputs from the group to handle the situation will be helpful.

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