Don't park next to Range Rovers

Well, was there any damage?

If there wasn't your story is just a waste of ink. If the car is not damaged, and you are not damaged, this is nothing but a collision of human egos!

Get a grip; there are far more serious events happening in the world than possible dings to your new motor car. You can bet that you lost far more value in depreciation since this event than the scuff marks the car suffered, if any. If, as you state, you had walked away from the car at the outset, this whole issue would have been a case of "out of sight, and out of mind."

 

Thanks dbacksfan you said what I was about to say plus some.

You handled the situation very well but I still would have reported it. Even if it was to claim the cost of polishing the car. My Prius is in for repairs right now.

 

Yep, and you just know that if it had been the other way around and you had "tapped" his car? He would of flown into a rage and imagined huge amounts of damage.

Glad you did not sustain any damage, as he sounds like the type that would of denied it to the grave. Wonder how many cars he has "tapped" in his lifetime. My guess is that you aren't the first. And of course, he drives a Range Rover that he obviously can't really handle.

 

If there was no damage, it doesn't really matter, but if there any damage at all, it is an issue.
You can't just hit someones car and eyeball it and say: "Well, I just took off afterward because I assumed it was only $100 or less damage."

 

Below a certain level, it will be a purely civil matter, not criminal. Police are interested only in the later. For the former, file in small claims court.

On top of that, our big city police departments have generally been uninterested in the lower level criminal matters, and in this budget crisis with across the board cuts and significant downsizing, their minimum threshold of interest has been pushed up sharply. This year, my county's sheriffs department has been talking about a $10,000 minimum loss in home burglaries before even investigating. The dollar amount is political posturing, but the principle is real.

 

If there is no damage, this is no more than a paint exchange, this happens all the time and nothing can do about it. I understand your rant because this is your bland new car and it hurts, but when the next time it happens again, I bet you won't even look at it.

 

Sometimes the crime is not the damage done, but the act of fleeing the scene afterwards
If you shoplift $10 of merchandise from a convenience store, the police still have to do their job even if the crime doesn't warrant jail time.

 

There is nothing bland about a Prius and I would look again if my car was 5 years old. This is exactly why I try to park next to cars that look looked after.

 

OK, perhaps I was a little too dismissive of your story, and if I did spoil your evening I apologize.
I was just trying to get some perspective on the incident. I do realize that we all have a tendency to fall in love with our possessions, especially if we have invested considerable time and money into them. The person you encountered could certainly have been more considerate, and it was his, not the Range Rover's fault. But since there was no damage to either you or your new Prius, my attitude would have been "no harm, no foul", and I would have left it at that.
Your remarks to him simply provoked a negative response as he was perhaps embarrassed by his clumsiness. But who knows?

This too shall pass.

 

People in general aren't very considerate of others' property. I was taking a nap in my Prius in a parking lot one day. The couple returning to their car parked next to mine banged my car with the door as they loaded their groceries. It wasn't particularly hard, so I didn't get too worked up, but then they banged it again. So I got out of my car and said "Stop banging my car!" They were pretty surprised because they obviously hadn't seen me! They apologized and I let it go at that because I knew that it hadn't been hard enough to cause any damage. However, I have had several little dings and scratches on my car which I don't remember happening, so I know people are just careless. I try to park with enough distance between cars, but it's not always possible.

 

I don't quite agree. Certain cars attract different types of people. Insurance companies charge rates depending on the car, and the driver. On average a Prius owner is going to be of a different temperament than a Range Rover owner.

Personally, I think the RR is one of the most ugly cars out there and are only status symbols of those who need to stake a claim of superiority over other SUV owners.

Lee

 

It's your sheep like approach that encourage jerks like that to pull these stunts then be flippant asses about it. Whether or not the person caused any damage they should have been apologetic, not aggressive. Their response simply deserved a butt kicking. With some luck they'll get theirs one of these days.

 

Exactly. The OP is throwing a temper tantrum over... no damage. There are some people in this world who are just looking to get bent out of shape over the most trivial of perceived slights. How do I know the OP is one of them?

Exhibit A: The OP didn't even see fit to mention in the first post that there was no damage, because it wasn't relevant to him. It was the "offense" that mattered.

Exhibit B: The post title screams Range Rover! - even though that has no relevance whatsoever. It does, however, explain a certain prejudice of the poster. I wonder if the same exchange would have occurred if the gross offender was a fellow Prius owner?

Exhibit C: After discovering there was no damage, the OP decided - "I need to start a thread on PriusChat about this." Need I say more?

No harm, no foul. Life's not worth fretting the small - or in this case, completely nonexistant - stuff.

And finally, the idea suggested by others of filing a police report for "hit & run" for a door contact resulting in no damage is laughable. I would love to be there when the officer arrives to prepare his report (be sure to note that it was a Range Rover....) Almost as bad as the fools who call 911 when McDonald's doesn't get their order right.

No offense.

 

Obviously he (the R. Rover owner) hit it on purpose, just to see what the OP reaction would be, whatever his ultimate goal was. People do wild things for wilder reasons... in this case, I would just ignore it... better get a scratch in my brand new car than get a scratch in my old but much more valuable face… it could be worse...

 

I doubt the driver of the Range Rover did it on purpose. He was probably just in a hurry to go club some baby seals.

Too bad the OP wasn't in the car at the time. He could have claimed assault & battery in addition to hit & run.

 

To be fair, you neglected to mention that before his baby seal clubbing expedition, the Land Rover driver first needed to sell some credit default swaps to HIV+ orphans, take a recreational transpacific flight aboard his Gulfstream V for the sole purpose of increasing the rate of global warming, and sell military-style assault weapons to several developing nations in the hopes that their populations would be sufficiently decimated by the ensuing ethnic cleansing to allow his multinational oil-drilling corporation to rape the region of its oil reserves--with the infrastructure built via a government-subsidized joint venture with Halliburton.

Of course, this litany of afternoon activities pales in comparison to his war crime of donating $200 to the Friends of Dick Cheney Political Action Committee, earmarked for Dick's 2012 Presidential campaign.

That sound about right?