I recently went to test drive a car, as I’m likely in the market for a new car. Unfortunately, my trip to the agency did not go as planned. In fact, while I was testing it, the car actually hit a concrete base and did quite a bit of damage.
Here’s what happened, and why it didn’t end up hurting my checking account.
Here’s how the car crashed
I was excited to look at this particular car because it advertised a self parking feature and I’m not always the best at parking. So, when I got in the car, I told the salesperson that this was one of the main things I wanted to experience while driving it.
The salesperson said it’s been a while since someone showed me how to use the feature, but it shouldn’t be a big deal. And he actually looked up a YouTube video to explain how to start the self parking feature and told me how to get started.
When I started the process, I commented to him, “Okay, so I’m not responsible here if the car crashes, right?” And he laughed. It looked funny at the time. And it all started smoothly. The car informed me that it had located a spot where it could stop, then started to drive back.
Things were going well as the car drove around and navigated its way into a very tight space in a parking lot that I wouldn’t have been very comfortable parking on my own. In fact, it got in between the other two cars and made its way back perfectly into the spot. Then it started beeping, and even though I tried to hit the brakes, it bounced back into a very large concrete base, doing quite a bit of damage to the rear of the car.
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Needless to say, no one was very happy with this outcome.
This is what happened next
Once the damaged car was returned to the dealership, the seller went to his manager to explain what had happened. At that time, the manager asked for meAuto insurance info because they wanted to hold me liable for the damages.
I had none of this, because the car was standing by itself at the time And I even commented to the salesperson that I wouldn’t be held responsible if something went wrong – and he was honest enough to admit to the manager. I still had to argue with them and retell the story several times, And The manager himself took the car out and tested the self-parking feature himself. This almost leads to the crash of A’s car second time, stopping for seconds before colliding with another vehicle in the area.
I got very lucky in this case because the car was clearly broken and had a problem because otherwise, I could have had to give this agency my insurance and let the insurance company pay for the damage. This would have caused my insurance premiums to go up.
So, long story short, if you crash a car at a dealership while test driving it, your insurance company will probably be on the hook—unless the car was wrecked in some way. And I made it clear that you will not be charged if this happens.
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