[basjoos]

On Sunday morning at 4:30AM I was driving to work at the PSL of 60mph as usual when, unknown to me at the time, there was also someone out driving a blue car who decided to take advantage of the cheaper gas and the reduced likelihood of encountering the highway patrol at 4:30AM on Sunday to test out the high speed capabilities of their car. You could tell they were a total neophyte at high speed driving since they weren't staying in the passing lane (irregularities in the road are magnified at high speeds and the passing lane is smoother because of its reduced amount of heavy truck traffic). They also didn't realize that their maneuverability is greatly reduced at speed and it takes much more time and distance to change lanes when clearing obstacles in their lane. One of the obstacles that they didn't lead out far enough when changing lanes was my car. They slammed into the back of my car at 100+mph while in the midst of moving onto the passing lane so there was about a 1/3 overlap between the front of their car and the rear of my car at the point of collision. I ended up spinning 540 degrees and guiding my car into the breakdown lane while rolling backwards at 20mph. The other car didn't stop, the other driver probably having thoughts on their mind such as the unreasonability of the highway patrol toward people doing 100+ in a 60 and their propensity of doing things like confiscating driver's license on the spot from said people.

Fortunately the boattail worked as designed and having that additional 3 feet of crush space on the back of my car saved the day. The collision used up 2.5 feet of the boattail's crush space and the damage didn't even reach to my car's original bumper still in place under the boattail. There was also some damage on the front where a corner of my nosepiece clipped a guardrail as I was spinning my way down the interstate. This impact also took out the right side headlight and marker light. The car ended up being completely drivable with practically no damage to the original frame of the car. All I had to do was to bend the taillights so they faced rearwards rather then to the side and down, where the collision ended up putting them and the car was perfectly drivable. The aerodynamics suffered from the collision, so I only got 68mpg rather then the expected 70mpg on the drive home.

So now I just need to rebuild the crunched left side of the boattail, replace the cracked lexan rear window, and repair the front right corner of the nosepiece. With the exception of the headlight assembly, I have all the parts I need here at the farm. The materials cost is less than $200, so I don't even reach the deductable on my insurance. I'm sure the high speed enthusiast will have a much higher repair bill awaiting them to repair the damage to their front end. I'm going to take advantage to the rebuild to address a few deficiencies in the current boattail design and to put a brighter array of LED lights on the tail. Physically I am fine other than a slightly stiff neck.