Company Car change.........crash bang wallop!

Last week, I had one of those "everything happening in slow motion, but can't do anything about it" moments.

Sat in traffic, about 6 feet behind the car in front, (tyres and tarmac rule!), stationary, foot on the brake. Next thing I here is engine revving and bouncing off the rev limiter. I can't remember if I said it out loud or just in my head "What's he doing?", next thing I remember is his reversing lights come on and he is coming straight back at me......Crash! Then he is back in forward gear and heading straight into the car in front of him, which hit  the car in front and the car in front. In total 5 cars damaged.

I immediately took a couple of photos and then moved the car to the side of the road. You can get a traffic violation if you are blocking the road after an accident, and don't want one of those.

Got out and first them was to check the guy who hit me was okay. He didn't speak English, but appeared okay, so that was fine. Spoke to the other car drivers and one of them was already on the phone to the Police. Nadia was with me, so she immediately started calling the company contacts. Took photos of all the cars involved etc. Then the other drivers moved their cars off the road, traffic was properly grid lock now!

The Police turned up and started speaking to everyone, took our licenses. and then told us we could go, no need to visit the police station and would receive the incident reference number via SMS for the insurance company. I did try to find out what had happened etc. but the Police officer simply said, all is good and I can go.

The company Mitsubishi rep said he was coming over to see the car. I didn't want to try and open the bonnet as not sure if it would have opened or if we would have got it closed again. The damaged had caved in the nose of the bonnet, and there was water leaking out the bottom of the car. There was no rise in engine temperature while we were sat, so didn't look like the radiator or fan was damaged.

He arrived and said to drive round to the Mitsubishi showroom which was about 5 km away. I was dreading the car breaking down on the busy main road, but we got there without any problem.

The rep, took my QID and Driving license to get copies, he had already been forwarded the police reference number. Then appeared a few minutes later and said wait while he goes and gets another car for me. He arrives back with another Pajero, which was recently returned from the company when another employee left. It had only about 3500 km on the clock, so relatively new. And off we went!

I won't post the pictures, because there is potential to identify parties involved, which can lead to getting into trouble with the police around privacy issues.

One thing I will say, is the Police guy was excellent, and everyone involved was really calm.

Service from Mitsubishi was great and great help from the company rep!