D.O.P.-T.

[weofodthignen]

Coming back from a walk around the park at lunchtime, we noticed a couple standing on the sidewalk/pavement with a baby in a carrier and a small child. The guy was talking on his phone and an older lady was talking to baby and mom. A car was badly parked in front of them with its hazards on. Looked like there might be a problem. Then as I stepped into the street to walk around the car, I saw the cop cars and wreckage at the crossroads, the one where we cross to get to the park. It has traffic lights but all too many people speed. I don't know what had happened, but there was a totalled car in the middle of the intersection. Crumpled front end, glass, a pool of transmission fluid, a torn off and shredded bumper or two, and to my surprise, a lot of polystyrene. Looks like they pack bumpers with the stuff these days? I suppose it's better than foam rubber. No ambulance, but police cars kept arriving and after we managed to get across (drivers were having to inch through a right or left turn), one of the newly arrived cops started trying to find someone who'd actually seen it, rather than just emerged from their house at the noise. So we went home rather than get in the way.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, they pack bumpers full of polystyrene, these days. Supposedly it's for energy absorption, but its far more concerned with manufacturing cost reduction than anything other. It also makes it annoyingly expensive to repair a bumper, if someone's bumped your car while parking.

Glad that you made it home through the chaos, unscathed.

[dubhain]

NFI why DW posted my previous comment as Anonymous. Then again, that's par for the course, lately. Cheers.

[weofodthignen]

Yeah DW periodically logs me out. Not as bad as other things tho; I can't be permitted to read The Telegraph on my regular Firefox apparently. (Probably it's the Ghostery.)

It was a wakeup call. That remains a dangerous corner. It was very lucky that no one appears to have been injured. (And that neither car was a Tesla, or they'd still have been fighting the fire 12 hours later.)

Polystyrene. *Eyeroll*