Arghhhh!!!!! WTF?

[bobski]

An airbag going off at low speed will cause more damage to some people than a slight shunt will. I see how close some people drive to the steering wheel, feet on dashboards etc. You only want that sucker going off if it really needs to.

Also the deployment conditions and deployment severity seems to have come under the control of a computer that works out if it needs to be deployed, not just a dumb sensor.

What is threshold for airbag deployment

[bluefrog]

grrr .... just got bike scraped along the side near the fuel cap

Not quite as scary as Dave's, but a tad annoying. My own silly fault really for parking in front of a restaurant near the kids' school for pickup, where the kids with bikes are known to take shortcuts through.

At least the gloss enhancer that I put on made the panel surface much more slippery and helped the handle bars slide with less friction/damage .... fingers crossed it should easily buff out.

moments like these when you just want to

[redline3345]

I always, always search for a park away from other cars, preferably straddled across 2 parks so no one can park right next to me, or in between concrete posts/pillars etc and not where anyone with dodgy manouvering skills might use my car as a witches hat. It may mean walking further, but it's worth it to get away from everyone and prevent damage to the car - as many posters have stated, they just don't care. My non car type friends roll their eyes when passenger if I'm looking for a spot to park - they can't understand why I drive past spots where one or both cars either side are parked with one wheel over the line, on an angle, are a large 4WD, a large people mover, have a baby seat in the back, is a piece of crap, etc etc.
Parallel parks are not always safe either - I had a Subaru sideswiped on the street once, and that was where there was plenty of room on both lanes of the street...pos didn't leave any details either

[woofy]

After just finally accepting the deep but narrow scratch on my not even 1 yr old car, some POS has left a deep and wide scratch right up high on the rear passenger side door, so obvious that I saw it coming into the garage and it had piled up paint around it, from the gouging.

I haven't driven my car for a few days due to being sick, and the only time it could have happened was on the weekend when I was parked hard up against a pole which meant some twit must have tried to squeeze something down past it and the car on the other side. Or I was keyed....I'm actually wondering about the latter from how high and how bad it is.

[bobski]

After just finally accepting the deep but narrow scratch on my not even 1 yr old car, some POS has left a deep and wide scratch right up high on the rear passenger side door

That sucks so much mate. I still have to get around to fixing my scrape from some poor reversing and even though its not that noticeable, I get unhappy thinking about it. What eats away at me is I'd kept the car absolutely pristine for over 2 years and through the most banal set of random circumstances managed to ding it. Having someone intentionally do it would just add another dimension.