So I got rear-ended...

[DeHackEd]

Not going to go into too much detail here. This actually happened back in May of this year. The way I remember it I came to a stop in traffic, I swear I remember hearing tires skidding, and suddenly my car shook really violently.

My first thought was I stalled my car for some reason. That's just my normal association with the car shaking like that. But a quick check of the tach shows it still idling merrily. Oh crap, the next most likely explanation is even worse.

Damage report.

Person A hit person B hard which pushed them into me. I ended up hitting the car in front of me but it wasn't too bad for them - just rear bumper scuffing. My rear bumper had broken plastic along its internal mounts and pretty much all the holding clips popped out. The trunk lid was deformed but still opened and closed correctly. Later I'd find that my front grill had broken loose from its mounts. Doesn't that just ruin your day?

A 2002 Nissan Sentra (1.8L with decent features) and ~216,000 kilometers ended up being written off by the insurance company. Got just over $3000 CAD for it, mainly because between the car's age/expected value and cost of repairs wasn't worth it.

After some time driving a rental with a CVT (Interesting experience that) I'm now the proud-ish owner of a Mazda3 SKYACTIV (6-speed 2.0L). I officially love bluetooth audio.

Take-aways:

I was at the scene of the accident somewhere between 1.5 to 2 hours. That absolutely ruins your day.

In youtube videos of accidents you often see a car go rolling after getting hit like the driver was out to lunch. That's the disorientation and outright physical shock of the impact. You're not really thinking "gotta hit the brakes", you're thinking "wtf?". Even if you had the brake pedal down before getting hit who knows what'll happen to your leg on impact.

I was lucky there was no drivetrain damage to my vehicle. A quick reassembly of as much of the rear bumper as I could and it was at least safe to drive in-town.

I was considering getting a new car. I wasn't expecting the decision to be made for me.

[zenfiz6]

Many condolences on your loss. I'm sure the Sentra was a great car (I've never driven one).

You should really like the Mazda3. It was one of the cars I test drove during my own search.

But, yes, you really don't want to have to make a snap decision on buying an n x US$10,000 vehicle. I'm glad my transmission held out as long as it did. It took me two months of playing before I settled on my car. And even then I was at the last dealership over 4 hours trying to be certain that I made the right choice.

Much congrats on surviving an awful week or two. May that be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

[Squint]

Many condolences on your loss. I'm sure the Sentra was a great car (I've never driven one).

You should really like the Mazda3. It was one of the cars I test drove during my own search.

But, yes, you really don't want to have to make a snap decision on buying an n x US$10,000 vehicle. I'm glad my transmission held out as long as it did. It took me two months of playing before I settled on my car. And even then I was at the last dealership over 4 hours trying to be certain that I made the right choice.

Much congrats on surviving an awful week or two. May that be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

This ^^

Also, the Sentra (at least the newer ones, though don't know about the brand new ones) has a surprisingly large back seat for being such a small car overall. It dwarfs the RC car seats they put in the back of the Fiesta, at least the few times I was in one at my previous job. I've always been fairly indifferent about Nissan as a brand. They have some good cars, they have some okay cars, they don't seem to have any terrible cars, yet I've never loved them for some reason... who knows...

[RITmusic2k]

Welcome to the team; sorry to hear the circumstances under which it happened, though...

Glad to hear you're liking the new ride!