3-Car Mix-It-Up

This past Wednesday night (March 3rd), my Acura MDX decided to put its manliness on display and mix it up with two other cars. My car won, but at a bit of my expense. I was sitting at the red light in the left-hand turn lane on Chinden, waiting to turn left on to Five Mile, when I heard a horrific BANG!!! And literally in the middle of the thought, "What the heck was that???" there was a second BANG, and my MDX jerked violently forward and upward.

A car two cars behind me, which I'm guessing was doing about 45mph, hit the car immediately behind me, and that car ricocheted in to me. The first car was an older-model minivan, I think something like a Dodge Caravan. The second car was an older-model sedan, I think something like a Honda Accord. The first car was about two feet shorter, its front end all smashed in and steam flowing from the smashed radiator. The poor car in the middle was significantly shorter on both ends, totally sandwiched. Because they were both older-model cars, my guess is that the insurance company will total both vehicles.

My back bumper was kind of scratched and dented, but nothing awful. Just enough so that the texturing cannot be fixed, and they'll replace the entire bumper and bumper insert (more of a dent there). But as you can see from this picture on the right, my dual exhaust was definitely messed up. The muffler on the right has been pushed in by about six inches. That in turn bent all the exhaust piping, normally shug and cozy up in the chassis, so that it dropped and wasn't too far away from the ground (see picture below). Fortunately, the driver who caused the whole thing is taking responsibility for it, and his insurance company is being great. They got my car in for repair early Thursday and it should be fixed by Monday afternoon. They've arranged for a rental in the meantime, and all is well there. :-)

Fortunately, at the time of the accident, we all appeared to be fine. The guy who caused it was 18, the guy in the middle car was 17, and those young whipper-snappers are probably still OK (I have not spoken to either of them). But I'm sort of a wreck. Maybe it's because my car didn't give at all (I still can't believe how little damage it sustained!), but I've got whiplash really bad, with my neck and back really aching, and that in turn giving me a wicked headache. I've spent most of the last three days in bed with a heating pad and/or ice.

We've got a chiropractor that we like, and on Friday I finally gave up and went to see him. Hopefully he'll be able to help me recover a bit more quickly, and I can get back to normal. So that being taken care of, now I just hope that the auto body shop doesn't actually CLEAN my car when they fix it. As you can tell, I'm undergoing a bit of a scientific dirt test with my MDX.  :-)