I got rear ended last night on the way back home to Baltimore from a friend’s house.  Luckily, no one was hurt, and the damage to Traveler was only a couple minor cosmetic dings to the rear bumper.  I think.  I have to have my Mercedes dealer thoroughly check it out just to be sure.  But he hit me hard enough that I was certain when I got out of the car that I’d see a bent up rear bumper and some damage to the sheet metal back there. But it looks like the bumper took it and just popped right back into place.  I was pretty impressed with the design of that bumper after I got under the car once to study it a bit, shortly after buying it.  I’m a lot more impressed now.

The scary part was the driver admitted to me when he got out of his car that he had drifted off to sleep for a second.  I’ve no way of knowing if he was drunk or not, he wasn’t staggering or anything but he did look very tired, which could have been drunkenness or it could have really been he was too goddamned tired to be behind the wheel.  I told him if he was that tired he needed to get off the road.

Assuming he really was that tired it’s a good thing he saw he was about to run into me in time to slam on his brakes, because if he hadn’t it would have been a lot worse.  His tire marks were probably three or four feet long.  I had nowhere to go.  I was about two feet behind the car in front of me at a stop light, and there just wasn’t any time to get out of his way when I heard him slam on the brakes.  He hit my car hard, but not hard enough that the headrests deployed.  The C300s headrests will pop forward in a rear end collision to keep your head and neck steady.  These are the accidents you fear the most…the ones that just come at you all of a sudden and it doesn’t matter how careful a driver you are and there is nothing you can do but brace yourself.

While we were exchanging information two Arlington county police cruisers came up and we had to exchange information with them too but there was no question who was at fault and after making sure I was okay and I had all the other guy’s information they let me drive on.  I suspect they asked the other guy to do a sobriety test after I was gone, but as I said I’ve no idea if he was drunk or really just too damn tired to be on the road. 

I have routine scheduled maintenance coming up on Traveler anyway but probably Monday I’m going to have to take it into Valley Motors and have them give it a thorough going over.  If there is no structural damage I’ll try to finesse the little ding on the bumper where the other car’s license plate screw punched into it myself.  It would cost hundreds, if not well over a thousand dollars to repair or replace that bumper just to get rid of the ding, and even though it’s the other guy’s insurance company that would be paying for it, it isn’t worth the hassle.  They’ll want one of their own approved shops to do it and I’d probably have to sue to make them pay Mercedes to do it.  If there is hidden structural damage though…yeah…I’ll go through that hassle if I have to.  With relish.  Nobody touches that car but Mercedes-Benz.