Shoofin

I had to go down to Florida for a golf tournament that I am sponsoring through my company. I hesitated to get the plane tickets in advance because I wasn't sure if I was going to ultimately go or not, and by the time I decided that we would go, the price of the tickets were ridiculous ($500 per person round trip, going with my wife). I figured instead of flying and having to worry about renting a car, I may as well drive my wife's car down. We have her X3 for 18 months so far, it has 7900 miles on it, and I have about 12,000 miles to use for the next 6 months before I have to turn it in (24 month lease/10k miles per yr). So last night we hopped in the car for the road trip. We drove down in the past, but it was a one way trip, because I drove cars down for people, stayed there for the weekend and flew back. This would be the first time I'm making the round trip.
The first 2 hours were uneventful...I had to avoid a moron in an Expedition thinking he owns the road by accellerating to get away from him instead of slamming into me, and got pulled over for speeding. It's a 65mph zone that in most cases 80mph would do no harm to you, but he said he clocked me at 83. I was very nice to the officer, as he was to me. We told him we were switching off and driving straight to FL. He didn't give me a ticket for speeding, nor did the ticket it require me to go to court (thank goodness, the court is a few hours away from my house). He did give me a ticket which said something to the effect of driving in a manner that would cause an accident..WTF??I never heard of that, but whatever..There's no dollar amount on the ticket for the fine, I have to call the court and ask them what the fine would be...Anyhow we continued on our way. I drive straight from 9:15pm until 6am, wthen switched off with my wife. At that point we were at the midway point of the drive. My wife then drove from 6am to about 12pm. In the last 2 hours of the trip, my wife asked me to drive (we got there in 17 hours-from Brooklyn, NY to Miami, FL). At some point an 18 wheeler in front of me in the left lane was switching to the right lane, out of nowhere something that appeared to be a mudflap but much larger and harder whipped up from under his rear wheels and came straight for my car. I didn't have much room to move because to my left was a barricade (the shoulder was closed) and to my right was another car. I swerved as much as I could (with as much time as I had to react while going 80mph), and instead of hitting it head on, it hit the left part of my car and whipped around my car. At that point, everyone around me saw what happened and was able to avoid it. I'm pretty pissed off about it. There's debris all over I-95, it's really annoying. On the bright side, I'm still alive, but this money saving trip proved to cost me a hell of a lot more than I anticipated. Mental note, no more driving down to FL!







The damage isn't that bad, I do need a new bumper, foglight, possibly the headlamp (it was scratched bad), the fender and the trim around the wheel well was scraped, and the wheel got hit, and a few skim marks on the side of my car that look like it'll buff out. This blows man....

Whiskers

Sucks...Sorry...

Sarlacc

sucks dude. sorry to hear it, but at least everyone is ok.

neuronbob

Sorry to hear about that. At least no one got hurt and with a new bumper that'll look like new.

JnC

iTrader: (12)

Yikes , glad that you are Ok, the damage could have been A LOT worse.

alex2364

Doesn't look too bad. Are you planning on driving back to NY like that?

Shoofin

I don't really have much of a choice, so yes....I'm going to get it taken care of when I go back to NY next weekend..

is300eater

that sucks, and just think you still have to drive back Be careful! And that ticket is just weird. I've been thinking about my move up to Vancouver later this year... and wasn't sure if I wanted to make a road trip out of it or just have my FX shipped up there... I was already leaning towards shipping... now, with the thoughts of other idiots on the road... I'm definitely having it shipped. Good luck with the rest of the trip.

Shoofin

To me there's nothing worse than driving a damaged car every day...I'm the kind of person that needs to get it taken care of and fixed ASAP, now I gotta cruise around Miami like this, and then there's the ride back home, which I'm now not really looking forward to..

F23A4

That's rough Shoofin. Sorry to hear about that. I have done the NJ to Florida trip several times and it has always been fairly uneventful. (Thankfully)

LuvMyTSX

Sucks that you have to drive around Miami and then back home like that. Hopefully the trip home is better.

mclarenf3387

Sorry to hear that happened.

Not sure what it is, but lately at work I've seen a ton of X3s come in all smashed up.

Scrib

fuzzy02CLS

iTrader: (2)

I do that drive all the time. No mishaps. I'm sorry. But yeah 95 in FL is just horrible for road debris. I actually avoid it. I take I4 just north of Daytona, across to the FL turnpike & then take that south. I have to pay toll, but it's a much better, less stressful, easier drive.

synth19

that sux! write off?

ChrisQ1980

I drove from NY to Miami last April. I knew something would happen to my car so I rented an 07 Impalla for $300.

csmeance

if you thing 95 is horrible, try I-4, its crazy. where in florida are you right now?

NightHawk CL9

might as well.......

that'll buff right out

glad to hear that your ok

nokiaman

Glad you were fine. A car is a car so that will be repaired in no time when you get back...where on the other hand life is...sorry to read about your misfortunes on the trip as well. I wish you much luck on the way back!

fuzzy02CLS

iTrader: (2)

I the amount of road debris down 95 I've seen far worse then I4. Once you get past Fort Pierce heading south it gets really bad.
I've had tire chunks in west palm take out my headlight 2 times. My bumper is still scraped on the side from some other debris. I've had 3 windshields in other cars busted from flying road debris.

Shoofin

I'm in South Florida...Exit 17 off of I-95. I'm in Aventura, near the Aventura Mall. My parents have a Condo in Mystic Pointe, so we use it as often as we can...

Shoofin

Truthfully it really isn't that bad, and i'm not pissed off about the car. I'm more upset that it happened the way it did, especially when I'm in an area that's not my home town, so I can't do a damn thing about it until I get back next week. Good Birthday present for me I guess, ehh? (My B-day is tomorrow, 1/22).

I did attempt to push the bumper back into place, which I did do, so it doesn't look too bad now, other than the missing parts and the scratches/scrapes all over the area. I need to wash the car, as I drove down through three seasons of weather, and the entire backside of my car is glazed in crystalized salt from the roads. I'm going to take a few more pictures of the car with my digi-camera (the pics above are from my phone) before I clean it up, in case the insurance company needs to see what it looked like as the car appeared before being cleaned.

csmeance

95 does have alot of debris, but it has drivers with alot of sense. I-4 has a bunch of drivers who don't know jack shit about driving. I have had a rock crack a windsheild on my old car, and the problem was that the rock wan't really a rock. It was a piece of concrete that fell off the end of a concrete truck... That was fun.

stright-(paint)balling

i tore up my bumper right before christmas on my Accord for a replacement paint and install it was 600 bucks with tax and everything. i paid it out of pocket cause my deductable was 500. i'd say since it's BMW parts(no offence) it's gonna be a grand.