Crystal + Skippy = Me Very Cranky

MRH130 · **July 27, 2009, 08:52:18**

So here's a nice birthday present for me...

I was heading home from work on my birthday, when a very large kamikaze kangaroo barrelled towards me at full speed. I was on the Hume Highway, with the cruise on 110km/h, when this stupid creature decided to race towards the road at 90 degrees to all the cars. He jumped out in front of me and I swerved hard to the right, but he collected Crystal's headlight and front guard and proceeded to crumple himself down the side of my beloved car.

Unfortunately, although it looks like a lot of panel work and nothing more, it has just tweaked the B pillar a little. I'm not sure if Crystal will be repaired or written off as insurers don't overmuch like repairing cars with structural damage, even if it's light. The assessor will be looking at her in the next week or so.

Assuming the structure is ok and she's repaired, she'll need a new headlight and cover, new LHF guard, new front and rear doors and some work on the dogleg behind the back door. It also put a big scuff in the front bumper and damaged the left rear wheel. She now officially drives like crap too, so I'm not sure if a wheel alignment will fix that or if there is some other damage underneath. I'm not in the mood to put her on the hoist and look at the moment. The impact even caused my left hand Night Breaker to go out.

So I'm relegated to driving my stoopid Getz (which I actually like but I want my i30) until she's fixed. Extreme GRRRRRR.

Shambles · **Reply #1: July 27, 2009, 09:08:47**

How did the roo do?

(unlucky mate)

MRH130 · **Reply #2: July 27, 2009, 09:23:16**

skippy was DOA, lucky for him, saved him having to deal with me. Broke his neck on the front guard and then the rest on the doors.

I called the insurance company, and the guy said he just got off the phone with someone else who hit a roo about the same time. I don't think it was the same one though. Mine didn't get up.

2i30s · **Reply #3: July 27, 2009, 09:24:44**

lucky Skippy didn't come through your windscreen,he must of been fairly big to do that much damage.

Duckman · **Reply #4: July 27, 2009, 09:48:04**

Damn!

Kangaroos can get up to 100kg (the huge ones!), looks like you collected a fairly big one though!

My mate hit a wombat years ago, and to this day, there is still wombat hair, and a little blood under his car. It just never came off!!

bumpkin · **Reply #5: July 27, 2009, 09:53:28**

feel for you mate

Dazzler · **Reply #6: July 27, 2009, 10:36:16**

Sorry Michael..

Just shows how lucky I was.. Think it was before you joined I hit a large wallaby but it did surprisingly little damage..)

Trips · **Reply #7: July 27, 2009, 11:14:44**

oh man, those pictures, hate to see damage like that.
hope it gets fixed and works out well for you.

Blue · **Reply #8: July 27, 2009, 11:29:09**

OUCH!

They are a damn pest.
I hit one in my Camry when it was two days old, so I know how you feel mate.

Hemmi · **Reply #9: July 27, 2009, 13:05:20**

ozsnowman · **Reply #10: July 27, 2009, 13:25:27**

That sucks, sorry mate! I hope shes back on the road soon!

Kitedemon · **Reply #11: July 27, 2009, 14:46:42**

That sucks! Look on the bright side it could have been worse. A friend here hit a bull moose (700 kg 2.3m tall) 8 years ago totaled the car and broke his jaw, crushed shoulder, and a bunch of broken ribs, and made a hell of a mess of his face. He is still seriously suffering from it today I bashed up car is bad and sad but the other side of the coin is way worse.

I guess that is a fairly common accident down under? We nail deer, moose (not so common here in NS but Newfoundland it is very common accident and almost always does massive car damage!) oh and rabbits, porcupines, and skunk.

eye30 · **Reply #12: July 27, 2009, 19:03:17**

Sorry to hear of your close encounter with a roo.

In the UK roos are not the problem. It's usually other bl**ding motorists who don't understand the rules of the road who side swipe you.

PS Because of the possibility of roo incidents can you take out extra cover to protect your no claims against damage by roos?

bulldog180 · **Reply #13: July 27, 2009, 19:10:40**

Sorry to see those pics m8, but atleast you are ok.

Dazzler · **Reply #14: July 27, 2009, 21:56:46**

There is a lot of road kill on Tasmanian roads at times (fortunately most are small animals that don't do much damage to the car that hits them) eg possums and rabbits ..

If you are unlucky enough to hit a Wombat, Large Wallaby or Kangaroo it is a different matter (my m8 hit a cow with his getz the other day but was only going slow so it was still driveable but pretty banged up..)

Fortunately it is not common in Tasmania anyway to hit a larger animal and do major damage like Michael has done .. I have been driving for over 35 years and the wallaby I hit a few months ago was the biggest animal I have hit in all that time (touch wood)

here are some pictures of our lesser known animals (that i mentioned) for our overseas members

Possum

Wallaby (similar to a kangaroo but smaller)

Wombat (bit like a beaver .. but I like beavers more

)

Shambles · **Reply #15: July 27, 2009, 22:10:39**

Quote from: Dazz on July 27, 2009, 21:56:46

here are some pictures of our lesser known animals (that i mentioned) for our overseas members

Luxury.

We have the lesser-spotted bluebottle smashing against our windscreens in the UK...

No avoidance, just sheer and utter carnage

They're over 20 inches wide and 3 feet long.

And then there were 150 of us, living in a shoebox, in't middle of the road...

Dazzler · **Reply #16: July 27, 2009, 22:16:55**

Yeah those Shoe boxes with little un's in 'em must be a real hazard over there!

MRH130 · **Reply #17: July 27, 2009, 23:00:31**

Thanks for nice comments guys.

I live in the country but work in our nation's capital so I do a lot of country driving, especially at dusk and in to the night. I live about 150km from work, so I'm often dodging roos, wombats and foxes, but in all my time driving this is the first time I've hit one. Also, somewhat ironically, it was about 1600 hours (still daylight) and on the Hume Highway in reasonably heavy traffic (for overseas members, the Hume is a dual carriageway extending from Melbourne in Victoria to Sydney). This stoopid roo just picked that time to run directly in to the road so I guess it was just one of those things...

It was a very big one, but there seem to be a lot of them lately. As some people may know, they're doing a cull of kangaroos in some parts of Canberra due to overpopulation - wish they'd culled this one...

I am lucky he didn't come through the windscreen though, one of my father's friends was killed by a roo that jumped off the top of a cutting as he was driving through it. The roo landed on the windscreen, fell through it and tried to kick it's way back out of the car. The poor bloke was nearly cut in half from the roo's legs kicking at him.

Didn't know you'd hit a wallaby Dazz, but glad not much damage or injury. I have seen cars in the workshop that have hit roos at a good angle and hardly been damaged, but I saw a Commodore totalled from hitting a wombat. I must say I like beavers more too Dazz...

Fortunately the only actual gore on Crystal apart from fur in all the panel gaps is a bit of nastiness on the back wheel. A friend had a ute he hit a fox with and you could smell it on the car for about 6 months.

No I certainly wouldn't want to hit a 700kg bull moose! I'm guessing they're pretty slow moving creatures though? Do they run on to the road or just stand in the middle of the road waiting for poor people to come along and hit them?

oOh those 3 feet long lesser-spotted bluebottles look truly terrifying! I'd hate to have to try to remove the remains of one of those from my air-conditioning condenser!

P.S. We couldn't afford a shoebox for t'middle o' road, all 37 of us had to live in a paper bag.

MRH130 · **Reply #18: July 27, 2009, 23:06:34**

Quote from: eye30 on July 27, 2009, 19:03:17

In the UK roos are not the problem. It's usually other bl**ding motorists who don't understand the rules of the road who side swipe you.

PS Because of the possibility of roo incidents can you take out extra cover to protect your no claims against damage by roos?

Yeah we have those people over here too. They all drive certain types of cars though so they're fairly easy to spot.

I have a lifetime no-claim bonus so it makes no difference to me - I'm not aware of specific wildlife coverage though.

They don't consider it an "at-fault" claim so I don't think it will be a black mark on my insurance history. Skippy was a deadbeat though, so I still have to pay the excess. I don't like the insurance company's chances of getting ol' Skip to pay for the damage.

hayseed · **Reply #19: July 28, 2009, 01:34:24**

Yikes. Sad to hear about Crystal.

Glad though that you didn't take any damage from the experience.

I'm a little amazed that the side mirror didn't get touched in the collision. Hope things are able to be sorted quickly!

Kitedemon · **Reply #20: July 28, 2009, 04:57:00**

yup Moose aren't usually fast and yup stand around waiting to get run into. Usually they get the legs taken out and smash through the windshield, usually totalling the car and hurting the driver frequently. There are a lot of accidents a year NS isn't too bad we have tons of deer and (deer carry a heart worm that kills moose) not to many moose. But Newfoundland and New Brunswick have lots NB over 150 a year and Newfoundland four times that. They blend in quite well and hang out around swampy woods which are usually in low areas is blind hills and turns.

I have a funny moose car story (no moose were hurt during the making...) A class mate in university was going to her parents cottage for the weekend and on a back road saw a moose. She stopped and waited for it to move, it didn't. She honked her horn at it, it looked at her. She waited some more... Honked some more... Somewhere in this cycle the moose walked up to her car and tried to walk over it or on it or was just taking revenge for moose killed on the road. The result was that it managed to do terminal damage to the front end of her car (MG spitfire) and it calmly walked off into the sunset and left her a lone in the woods 10 miles from no where with a car that was un-drivable! She was there for 2 days before anybody came along to find her.

MRH130 · **Reply #21: July 28, 2009, 09:28:20**

ooh sounds rather unpleasant. Bet she was glad when someone came along. Having the car walked over by a deranged moose has a slightly "Jurassic Park" feel to it! :o

I was towing a car on a car float with my old Valiant one night near my place and came on a kangaroo standing in the middle of the road. I beeped and it ignored me so I put the car in neutral and gave it a big rev and so skippy went bounding off... straight down the road in front of me. I ended up having to follow this bloody roo for nearly 15 km. In the end we were just laughing our heads off at this thing bounding down the road in front of us ignoring our attempts to get it out of the way.

Didn't want to get in to too much sparring with it because I was towing another vehicle, but at it's best it was bounding down the road at a good 40 or 50 km/h and didn't look like it was trying very hard.

I think the one I met with Crystal was probably going faster than that - it was certainly bigger.

Dazzler · **Reply #22: July 28, 2009, 10:26:19**

I have a funny animal (roadkill story too) I think I mentioned it on here a long time ago.. But a guy my ex-wife used to work with got married to some American girl and they came back to Tassie for a visit.. She seemed besotted with much of tassie including our wildlife.. She said how lovely and soft Possums were ...

I said you have to be careful patting them because they have sharp claws... She said (in a strong American drawl...) "It's o/k it was dead on the side of the road...

Oh yuck

P.S. here is the link to my little smash.. I still don't know if it was a small Kangaroo or a very large wallaby I reckon it was about 3 feet tall...

https://www.i30ownersclub.com/forum/index.php/topic,2765.0.html

MRH130 · **Reply #23: July 28, 2009, 11:37:43**

ow Dazz, I guess you were lucky but that's still a bummer.

It's loads of fun inflicting our wildlife on tourists - I imagine showing an Australian a bull moose would have the same effect though.

Tourists with koalas are funny too - they look so cute and cuddly in pictures but they stink like you wouldn't believe and are riddled with VD.

Kitedemon · **Reply #24: July 28, 2009, 17:18:08**

MRH130 awww but they are so cute.... the usual response with moose are I didn't think they were so big...

bumpkin · **Reply #25: July 28, 2009, 18:09:35**

Quote from: Kitedemon on July 28, 2009, 17:18:08

MRH130 awww but they are so cute.... the usual response with moose are I didn't think they were so big...

Awa wi ye, I've played wi a moose, their jist a wee furry rodent, even sma'er than a rat

For the uninitiated in Scottish house=hoose, mouse=moose etc etc

snowcherry · **Reply #26: August 02, 2009, 11:15:43**

sorry to read about the roo incident

do a lot of highway driving myself to work and back and its always a concern, there's been an excessive amount of roadkill about last month as well...not sure if they're on the move or something.

side note re wildlife, never had much experience with it while living in brissy but at some point you sort of get used to roos satiating themselves under your kitchen window and the odd possum scuffling around on the lounge chair in middle of the night. cutest was the little echidna who firmly believed if he kept his nose in between the boxes in the garage and couldn't see me, then i couldn't see him and his spiny wiggly behind. most annoying is the odd very frisky possum in the roof.

MRH130 · **Reply #27: August 11, 2009, 03:18:29**

Here's an update on the patient:

She went to the panel beater this morning who agreed that the B pillar is bent. They have indicated (so far) that they still intend to fix her. I'm not sure that structural damage like that can be repaired to "good as new" and I'm not prepared to take the chance on hurting someone in my car if it gets hit there again.

So I'm in discussions with the insurance company to see what will happen. In the event that she does end up getting fixed, now that I know there is structural damage I will be trading her in straight away.

So either way it looks like I'm getting a new car - poor Crystal. Now I just have to choose one...

Dazzler · **Reply #28: August 11, 2009, 13:54:10**

Amazing what a Kangaroo can do.. One of those Diesel Sonata at $24,990 might just be the trick

MRH130 · **Reply #29: August 11, 2009, 22:26:50**

hmmm I'm thinking that - or maybe I'll build my own SR CRDi.