Whistleblower
The question of what caused this carnage can be answered with a look under the car. All will beccome clear shortly.
Well, readers, welcome to the chamber of horrors. The following pictures will help me explain what I believe led to the sudden death of my car.
Certain areas of the images have been enhanced for the sake of clarity, while in other places, items that might disclose the make and model of the car have been obscured.
According to the 'professsional' inspector that examined the car, this was caused by 'adverse driving styles'[sic] and 'impact damage'. I crossed a very mild speed pad at 20mph.
There was nothing to be seen in the road and no debris to be found.
.This is the outer third of the car's track control arm, which was allegedly broken by 'impact damage'. The red ellipse highlights the only thing that remotely resembles impact damage of any kind.
Feeel free to examine the voids in the cross-section of the metal and the edge breakaways at the top. Then draw your own conclusions about the composition of the metal.
I thought I'd run over a brick in the road but there was no brick to be seen either before or after this happened.
I've never seen such an oddly-shaped brick anyway. The plausible explanation is to come.
Now we're getting somewhere, with this view of the leading end of the car's nearside sill. Here's my take on what happened.
1: After I'd crossed the speed pad, the suspension arm snapped as the suspension rebounded.
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2: As I braked upon feeling the shock through the steering, the scarcely located wheeel was rammed by the sill with immense force, enough to distort the sill as shown.
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3: At this point, the sill punched a hole in the wheeel welll, causing the tyre to instantly deflate.
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4: With the now-reshaped sill jammed tightly into the still rotating wheel, the car essentially 'tripped' over its own wheeel.This is what caused the nearside front of the car to buck violently upwards.
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5: As the barely-located wheel leaned outwards at the top, the car crashed down on to it. This explains the crush damage above the wheeel arch.
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6: The utterly flat tyre and its fouling on the wheel arch combined to impose a lot of drag, pulling the car towards the left. The unlocated lower end of the strut robbed me of most of the steering control. I therefore couldn't avoid the parked car on the left.
This leaves just one picture, which I've put into portrait format for clarity.
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Please examine the damage carefully and compare it with the shape of the front end of the silll as it's shown above.
Adverse driving styles? Impact damage - from an unseen piece of debris that two police officers, three witnesses,
two hepful bystanders, the recovery driver and myself couldn't find? I don't hink so. The defence rests...for now.
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