Low speed rear end collision, resulting scuffs on bumper

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Black_Sunshine

New member
Hey all, I was at a traffic light this morning and a guy slid into my rear bumper. Theres a scuff in the shape of his license plate on my rear bumper, and the two bolts left shallow 'dents' or 'gouges' where they ran downward slightly on the impact. This is the second time my first brand new car has been assaulted since I got it in July.



Anyway I told him to get lost I didn't want to tell my insurance company I got into another accident. The scrapes and gouges are white and it looks like they're right through into the polyethylene or whatever the bumper is made of. Do you think I could make it look reasonable with touch up paint or something? The marks are so low on the bumper that they're hard to see and I don't want to pay to have the whole bumper repainted. I'll get some pics when theres more daylight outside.



What do you think I should do?
 
Alright I got some pics. It looks like I might be able to get most of the upper stuff off with clay. The bolt gouges are screwed. Theres a big slice inside the indented part from the license plate acting as a cookie cutter there. What do you make of it?



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A couple years back my wife borrowed a trailer and had it come loose and hit her back bumper. I was really surprised at how much damage the clay bar took off.



Of course the gouges aren't going to come off.
 
If he rear ended you.. he's at fault. His insurance should pay for the damages. If you have a deductible, you may have to pay that.
 
DaGonz said:
If he rear ended you.. he's at fault. His insurance should pay for the damages. If you have a deductible, you may have to pay that.
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No you won't pay a dime if you got the police involved and he got a citation. He'd have to pay the whole thing and your insurance doesn't even have to know. I've been hit 3 times in the past 4 years or so and this is how it works. I gave up on getting the bumper fixed. I just referred to it as the "bill collector".



Since it seems you didn't get the cops involved or his info, he's probably kicking back with his friends and talking about how lucky he is...
 
In Utah, the other guy (as long as he was at fault) would be responsible for all the damages done to your car. Your insurance would have never been contacted, only his. All you would need is a police report showing the person at fault, as well as a description of damages.



I thought it was this way in most states?
 
Yeah I could have done the insurance thing and got the cops involved but it was like 5:30 am and I just wanted to go home and sleep, the damage was so little that I wanted to try fixing it myself.
 
Ouch, not a good move. You see sometimes there is more damage underneath the plastic. Look underneath to see if there is any deformation of the underlying metal and bumper supports. If the bumper has been sliced open there really isn't much you can do about that but try and polish out the white stuff by hand and live with it.



Oh and quit smoking its not good for you ;) :) It looks like you have a cig in your right hand.
 
Alright I had a more thorough look at it tonight. I got most of the white off with claybar and I bought some touch up paint and put it on the gouges. I'll have to get some wetsand paper tomorrow and go at it to level off the touch up in the gouges. That touch up paint goes on just like old fashioned 'white-out' I don't know how they expect people to get a decent result with that alone? With the wetsand paper and polish I should be able to remove all scratches, and make the gouges much less visible. I'll post pics after I get it done. Wish me luck. Hopefully the sun will be out tomorrow so I can see what I'm doing and get good pics.



BTW that is a cig in my hand good eye Yal attention to detail!
 
Black_Sunshine said:
Yeah I could have done the insurance thing and got the cops involved but it was like 5:30 am and I just wanted to go home and sleep, the damage was so little that I wanted to try fixing it myself.
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Good luck with that. Probably going to cost you $300-500 to fix it right, as in replace the bumper cover and repaint...and that is assuming no other damage was done.
 
SuperBee364 said:
In Utah, the other guy (as long as he was at fault) would be responsible for all the damages done to your car. Your insurance would have never been contacted, only his. All you would need is a police report showing the person at fault, as well as a description of damages.



I thought it was this way in most states?
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Not in Michigan. We have no-fault insurance. What a harebrained idea. :grrr
 
Their's currently 11 states that have no-fault laws:

Michigan

New Jersey

New York

Pennsylvania

Hawaii

Kansas,

Kentucky

Massachusetts

Minnesota

North Dakota

Utah
 
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