Prius rear-ended on Interstate

wow, glad to hear you are ok, really surprised on how well your Prius held up!

 

Glad to hear everyone is ok !
If the insurance company is going to repair it make sure you are compensated for diminished value.

 

Sorry to hear WeSaySo, glad all are OK. We had a close call on I-66 in NoVa last nite. Yikes, left merge onto I66 traffic at 70 MPH speed limit.

Couple ideas...you might want to call your locality and ask if serious accident reduces the car blue book value on the tax books. If so this would reduce your annual property taxes on the car if you hold it. I was going to recommend you get registration stickers out to 2016, but I am too late on this (to save new Hybrid fees)..looks like you have already registered out to 2014. If you get a new or used Prius replacement, consider registering the car out to 2016 (I am unclear if registering out 3-yrs is an option for a new car purchase). I presume your existing registration fees would be refunded.

Maybe you could get a good deal on a new Plug-In Prius PiP up here on the DC Beltway. The advantage I am thinking is you get $2500 Fed tax credit to offset our crazy VA property taxes, possibly you can hook up with Dominion for their test deal on reduced rate overnight charging. Make sure you like a PiP though. It's not that I am pushing PiP, I just think Virginia is anti-hybrid with taxes. So we have to look at other options. If you got the PiP on MD side of Beltway, it would be CARB certified which gains nothing for us but I don't know if that gives you future flexibility if you plan to sell it.

 

wow! nice crumple zone on the vovo. glad you're okay! tim e for a '13, you deserve it!

 

Sad to see a fellow Blue Ribbon shunted like that!

Do the hatch and doors operate reasonably well? I'm not seeing gap issues around the hatch and that's pretty remarkable. If I were you and were generally happy with the car I'd get it fixed and keep it.

 

Your safe that's what counts

 

So glad your ok. It might be worth it for you to get to a doctor and have your neck checked out. Lots of times problems happen later on and you want to have it documented. Often people have issues but no documentation so they lose out. Good luck to you and you Prius!

 

That is surprising. I don't even see a broken taillight on the Prius!

I kind of wonder if her panic braking pushed the nose of her car so far down she went under your car? Do you remember your rear end leaving the road at all? The way the crumple is, it almost looks like your undercarriage pushed out her engine.

If the frame is OK, it should be OK. A hard impact like that is never nice, but these are well built. Hybrid versus non-hybrid doesn't matter. If it were a frontal collision that took out the relative area of the inverter, that would be a different story. But the rear hatch is like any other car. The traction battery is almost under the passenger seat it is so far back there, so no worries.

 

First, glad your alright...that's never a good situation. Other then that, WOW the Prius looks relatively un damaged compared to the Volvo. From the looks of it your getting away with a few jacked up body panels. It sucks nonetheless, but you will almost certainly get your car back which is always a plus

 

Looks like that Volvo hit a Prius made of hardened steel.

 

I have a Volvo 850 like the one pictured and my wife has the same Prius (same color and everything). This is too funny. I will say the Volvo looks bad but it's the sheet metal that is damaged, look at the bumper it doesn't look like it was even touched, I bet the frame is fine. I was rear ended by a Tahoe going around 30 or so, Tahoe was torn up but I had a few dents on my rear bumper. I got a $300 check from that one. Looks to me like the car slid underneath your rear bumper and smashed the sheet metal to all hell.

From the looks of it, can't quite tell exactly, but that was a fairly rare 850R. Unfortunate for everyone.

That being said Volvos were good in their time but the new designs are quite a bit stronger. We bought the Prius for its fuel economy and safety record. The 850 would peak at about 29-30 mpg. Course it could haul quite a bit more.

 

Wow! Glad you're okay. I agree with Toaster's assessment about the panic braking dropping her bumper below yours. Looks like she hit your bumper with her radiator core support.

Impressive how well your Prius held up on the impact.

 

Gads, sorry to hear about this... glad you are OK, though these things can come back later one.

 

Sorry to hear/see that, but glad everybody was OK. Amazing Volvo damage vs. Prius!

 

Team Volvo likely deserves some kudos on the overall outcome on this. The way the front of the Volvo did a "controlled collapse" it allowed the energy to be absorbed in the front end components rather than most of it being transferred into the Prius.

RAL

 

That was also our reaction when we were hit last year. But the Prius came out quite well.

As another poster mentioned, if the Volvo was braking hard, its nose may have submarined under your bumper. I did this long ago in a previous car, striking an SUV. The front bumper was nearly unscathed, just a couple tiny scratches on top. The grill, radiator, headlights, and hood took the entire impact. (The engine and even the fan were unhurt.)

 

Your Prius was one tough egg to crack (my wife says Prius look like eggs). Now if this was a truck that was raised up and it looked like that car, I'd have the picture made into a bumper sticker for those tailgaters to see.

 

HAHAHAHAHA

Actually, this reminds of an event 30 years ago when my family was in Germany.

We were in a Mercedes sedan and were rear-ended by some U.S. servicemen who were distracted looking at the ladies in the red-light district.

When we turned around and saw the damage to their vehicle, we thought that our car had to be in bad shape, but the Mercedes was hardly scratched.

It is typically the car that does the rear-ending that takes the brunt of the damage, since the front-end is designed to crumple to absorb most of the force of the impact. So the Volvo most likely functioned as designed, protecting both drivers from much of the force.