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A Testy Test Drive by Drivin' Ivan
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The subject of what happens if you get into an accident while on a test drive came up in a conversation I was having recently, and this served to bring my mind back to a "testy test drive" that I was on many years ago. My friend who lives in Manhattan was in town and was considering the purchase of a luxury car. We went to the nearby Mercedes dealer to see what lightly used cars they had in stock. After looking over the current inventory, we settled on a mid level Mercedes and the salesman handed us the keys and told us to test it out.
The test drive went smoothly with the normal test drive rituals of trying out the radio, seeing how comfortable (or too stiff perhaps) the seats were, and checking braking and acceleration. We headed back to the dealer on a busy two lane major thoroughfare. It was getting to be rush hour and this road had all of the most terrible conditions for snarling traffic (and causing fender benders). Every block or so is a left turn opening with no extra turn lane. This of course means that people are always trying to weave in and out of traffic to keep moving. This inevitably has them speeding through the passing lane, that is until someone stops to turns left in front of them causing them to hastily change back to the right lane.
In our case because of the snarling traffic, both lanes had stopped in front of us and we were in the left lane a few blocks from the dealer. I remember getting that sort of intangible feeling you get when you foresee something bad about to happen. You know, that person who's about to fall down the stairs, or that book about to fall off of the shelf and hit you in the head... yeah, "that" feeling. I kind of knew we were about to get hit, and sure enough, we were hit from behind. Fortunately it was a crowded street with only a 30 mph speed limit. After seeing that we were both OK, we got out of the car to survey the damage and see who was responsible for ramming into our test drive vehicle.
The car that hit us was piloted by a very young teen-aged female who asked us why we had stopped in the middle of the road. The question was met with disdainful looks from me and my friend and we told her that we were on a test drive and that the car was not ours. She then went on to tell us how she just looked over to check the radio and than all of the sudden we were in front of her. This of course met with more of our perplexed and disdainful expressions. The Mercedes suffered only minor scratches and a transfer of paint from her license plate. Her econo-box however was not so fortunate. The front of her car had begun to accordion and buckle up due to the impact. Her car was still able to be driven and therefore we told her that she would have to come back to the dealership with us.
After arriving back and informing the salesman that his car had been hit, he looked quite alarmed and went over to the car to survey the damage. The girl was looking quite stressed-out and her parents were called over to the dealer. Her none too pleased father arrived with cash in hand to pay the dealer for the damage incurred to the Mercedes. I suppose with a young driver who had just gotten her first car, he probably wanted to avoid reporting it to his insurance company. My friend did not end up buying the Mercedes, and actually eventually ended up with a BMW 3 series sedan.
Fortunately nobody was hurt in the accident (except for the teen-aged girl's pride that is) and it actually ended up being pretty funny to look back upon. Of all the times to get rear ended, you probably would rather not have it happen while you are in somebody else's car. The only other time that I came close to having another incident while in a borrowed car was with my uncle's pristine 1966 Mustang GT Convertible with pony interior. He let me take it to my prom, and when I was parked in front of the hotel, a car came very close to side-swiping it. I remember that terrible feeling I got when seeing the car narrowly miss the fancy Ford. To this day I much prefer to drive one of my own cars, and I always get a bit nervous when driving a test drive car because you are never sure when the teen-aged driver behind you might be changing the radio station or CD!
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