Possibly. But I'd like to know from where you get this 5 MPH figure.

The tearing off part isn't so much a result of the speeds involved as it is the angle of each vehicle's orientation.

It's important to remember that cars these days aren't made like cars 50 years ago. Back then, conventional wisdom had it that we should entomb motorists in tanks. The result was that the cars frequently came out of collisions without much discernable damage, possibly, but the occupants were dead. So, the cars took little beating and the people took a lot.

We now have smarter engineers who drink on the job a lot less. So, the cars are made to take a lot of damage thereby reducing the damage the occupants take. This is what's known among educated folks (read those who are literate) as a good thing. While it's more expensive to repair cars when a collision happens, it's less expensive than having to make a whole new replacement person and raise him/her up to adulthood.

Incidentally, from what I can gather in these here handy photographs, I wouldn't agree that the quarter panel is smashed. Smashed, to my mind at least, is when the damage is sufficient that repair is costlier than replacement. This looks to be rather superficial damage any reasonably decent auto-repair shop can get up and running in short order.

I do have a question about the orientation of the darker vehicle. How'd it come to have such an oblique angle? Was it merely a sharp turn, or was it pushed there from the collision?

-- Edited by ashman165 at 01:58, 2008-08-23

Though I'm sure you're worried more about the damage to your car because that's the high dollar item, but I don't think that's a telling piece of information.

A 5 MPH collision between cars of these types, on this type of surface is never sufficient to slide a car across the roadway. You could perhaps have a friend drive 5 MPH and hit your car to test this, but that will result in damage. However, empirical data is generally quite convincing. It isn't something I'd do, but it is one way to get at the heart of the issues.

Depending on the dollar values standing to be lost in court, it's probably not worthwhile to hire an expert in the field, but you can find books which have the basics of collision dynamics.

The masses of the vehicles are similar, and at 5 MPH the inertia between the 2 cars isn't that different. Neither car should be substantially moved by the collision off of its original trajectory.

That's about the best I can tell you from the photos and on a website.

G'luck!

As much as it may be difficutlto prove that the other veh was travelling at +5mph, one has to question, apart from your word, whether your vehicle was stationary or moving at the moment of impact as well?
Just a small degree of movement with your ar could as easily resuult in the scenario you have provided.
Always very difficult when dealing with low speed.

Probably not what you want to hear, but generally the person doing the backing has to yield the right of way.

Next time you get into your car drive at 5mph and then tell me if you would hit a car that has already backed out half way. There is no way that you would not be able to stop, and if for some reason you couldn't stop you definitely wouldn't drive through someone. I know what the laws are, I'm just saying that the other driver certainly broke some laws too.

I'm curious the nature of these legal proceedings. I don't know what state you live in; however, this was a parking lot. To that end, it's private property. The majority of traffic laws aren't enforceable on private property - with notable exceptions for dui, reckless driving, and dwls. Is this some kind of municipal, county or state property where this parking lives?

Unless your state is profoundly different from all the other states in the union, most moving violations aren't criminal (with a notable exception of Texas, but there's no great surprise there). They're civil infractions over which courts of limited jurisdiction (through construction but not necessarily name) have little to no authority.

As for the "eye witness" issue, I'm of the opinion that categorically these people's testimony shouldn't be allowed into "evidence", with, of course, the proper exceptions taken into account.

But let's take Blue's case. The speed was 5 mph, or a couple of more mph over. I think we can all draw on our common experiences in parking lots. A great majority of people in parking lots don't travel 5 mph. They're generally in the 10 mph or so range.

While it doesn't sound like much - what difference does 5 mph make? Well, that depends. In a case where the expected speed is 5 mph, 10 mph makes a huge difference. In fact, it makes a difference by a factor of 4. You see, though there are only 5 miles per hour difference between the two speeds, the kinetic energy differential is 4 times. Double speed, quadruple kinetic energy.

Kinetic energy and work energy, though different, are always equal in classical physics. This is such a case which is governed wholly by classical physics. So, the example isn't trivial. Work energy and kinetic energy loosely (and I do mean loosely in this paragraph - very loosely at that) can be understood as the ability of the things in motion to do work - to push, pull, deform, redirect and so on other physical objects. Cars are such a case. The example isn't trivial.

Essentially, the quantity of kinetic energy possessed by an object in motion is equal to the amount of work energy required to stop that object. Cars are objects, and this isn't trvial.

From that, we now have to consider the relationship of each vehicle's kinetic energy individually, and together.

This is something I don't know as I lack any graphical, detailed representation of the scene. I have a few photographs which, nothing personal, aren't really of much evidentiary value. But judging from the orientation of the car's tires (the one in the stall that is) in relation to the rear end of that car and taking into account my experience with how people back out of stalls, it seems more likely than not to me that the rear end of that vehicle was pushed off of its original course.

Eyeballing the trajectory the car would have taken, I wouldn't expect that the car would have wound up with such an oblique orientation.

I would also like to spend a moment to make a finer point of law that seems to escape many people. Namely that no one has the right of way as an absolute right. We are all obliged to do what we can to avoid a collision. Even if one is in a legally standing vehicle, obeying the speed limit, and so on, it is entirely possible that said one could be largely responsible for a collision for choosing not to do what is required to attempt to avoid a collision.

While it's a general rule that a vehicle merging has to yield the right of way, it is not fair to say that those who aren't specified in law to have to yield the right of way are in fact in possession of the right of way. In short, the right of way is always yielded; it is never assumed.

Anothing thing to consider is that if a person is indeed going 5 mph, the stopping distance is going to be well under 10 feet - including the perception-response times. This is, of course, assuming the driver actually attempted to stop. It could be entirely possible that said driver continue applying power after the collision thus resulting in the post collision orientation. But were that the case, and the speed was indeed very slight, I wouldn't expect the departure to be so dramatic. The vehicles should still be in contact.

Of course, I don't know if either was moved after the collision. As I earlier admitted, I don't have a full scene documentation from which to go. But just because the crash is unimportant (sorry, this one is), and not worth a police presence (no idea why they were there), doesn't mean that it can't present a nice case for study.