rockyfeller

Well, I haven't been back on this board for quite some time now. I am still not over the trauma of what happened to me a year ago. My beloved 16 month old 2006 E350 4-matic was totalled. It was rear-ended in a completely freak accident. Coming back to this site reminds me of my beautiful car so I stayed away for awhile to try to get over it. I still can't!

I was coming back from Boston one night at 3AM. I saw a weird "passenger airbag off" warning come up on my display in amber colored warning.....my car never had a malfunction or errror of any sort. I thought maybe it was because my wife was sitting in the seat sideways in a weird position while we were talking. I casually pulled to the very wide shoulder of the newly paved deserted highway to check it out. I turned the ignition off and on to try and reset the warning. It didn't work. I restarted the car again.....and it worked. No more warning. So I grab the shifter while my leg is on the brake about to shift to drive. I see a flash of light in my rearview and a millisecond later "WHAAAM!!" I had no time to react or evade. An Accord coupe slams into my rear end and recoils and rebounds ending up backwards on the highway. My car was pushed about 25 ft. and we were not injured. (minor whiplash) The other driver was in complete shock with a minor knee injury but was OK. She had no idea what happened, but it was completely obvious she fell asleep. As luck would have it out of all places on that beautifully wide empty guardrailed highway she had to hit ME! How luck was I to be INSIDE my car and BELTED? WOW! Her car was CREAMED! My car was destroyed on the rear and was fatally injured with the rear wheel pushed inwards with the tremendous force wrecking my 4-matic parts. Here's the amazing facts; Not 1 piece of window glass broke! Not 1mm of passenger compartment intrusion. The damage is extreme but it dosen't look like a 70mph crash! This car performed exactly as it should have and sacrificed it's life to let us walk away without a nick. Absolutely beautiful! This is why you buy a Mercedes Benz! This car saved our life! (OK well credit goes first to God)





I encourage you guys to drive safe. DON'T pull over to those shoulders for ANYTHING! Take an exit! I am virtually paranoid about this now but maybe it's a good thing! Those "extreme videos" you see on TV could really happen to you, no joke!! You think you're careful and it can't happen to you. But it can and it all happens in a blink of the eye. You can't trust other people's driving nowadays! They could be drunk, eating, sleeping, watching TV, on the phone...etc. going 70mph. You can try to be as safe as possible but other people are SO careless. If they slam into you and you are outside your car...you're DEAD!! My cousin's aunt died this way. Standing on the shoulder while on the phone after she got in a fender bender she wasn't paying attention and neither was someone driving by. A car slammed into HER at 70mph. They found her body thrown 100ft. ahead and her legs on the other side of the highway! Hearing that story was not lesson enough for me....I had to go through this accident and now trust me! Lesson learned! I never pull over on a highway or busy road. I don't make risky manouvers like before, I'd rather take my time and be safe. I am happy and lucky to be alive!!

Well coming back to the subject, did I mention.... I miss my car??......!!.......The car had just 12k miles on it, still smelled like leather and hardly had a fingerprint on it. I took such impeccable care of it. It just goes to show, you can take care of a car so well; clean it with a q-tip. One fine day the whole thing can be trashed!

We have owned Mercedes Benzes continously in my family for 22 years so it is so weird to not have one in the garage anymore. Why didn't we replace it with a cool new E350 4-matic Sport? We considered it, but I was just too spooked and decided to temporarily take a hiatus from Mercedes. All my German cars are gone as a matter of fact. We recently bought 3 brand new cars in a row; an Acura TL, Lexus ES350 and a Cadillac DTS. I am still too much of a BMW/Mercedes fan, I'll be back to German cars soon!

I have one little thing that is up for sale if any of you are interested;
https://mbworld.org/forums/showthrea...66#post2375266

The E-Class is still the best car we ever owned. I don't want to say goodbye, I'll still be checking back here time to time. I want to say thanks to anyone who has ever helped or advised me. Take care guys.

bigmel

sorry to here about your accident I will listen to your advise.

DWP

Thank you for the account and the advice. I can only agree that it's never a good idea to stop along a highway, day or night.

The driver of the Honda probably didn't fall entirely asleep and just happen to drift off the road where you stopped. She was probably in the process of dozing off and followed your taillights right off the road and into your stopped car.

Long ago I was a Deputy DA in Indio, California, which is east of Palm Springs. A family in a station wagon was driving from LA to Arizona and the father pulled over along I-10 out in the desert so that the kids could change seats. A semi with a driver who had been driving for something like 15 hours straight was following - it was daytime - and in his half-conscious state he followed the station wagon onto the shoulder and plowed into it. The gas tank of the wagon ruptured, of course, and everyone inside was incinerated. Four people, as I recall. The worst part for me, besides having to see the accident photos, was that the 10-year-old boy of the family, who was outside the wagon when it happened, saw everything. The truck driver got off with misdemeanor manslaughter because he was driving his truck on the shoulder instead of in the traffic lane - that was all. The excess driving time was a federal, not state, violation and there was no intent to kill on his part.

So, yeah, I never pull over on the side of a highway either. Excuse my venting but even though it was in 1973, I still remember that case very well.

Germancar1

Very touching story. I have a blowout recently and after stopping on the side of the highway and after having a semi blow past rocking the car before I even got out of it I decided to drive on to a an exit before trying to change the flat. It really is dangerous to stop on the side of the road for anything. Hell bend the rim, ruin the tire, etc, but don't stop on the shoulder unless you absolutely have to!

M

bigmel

that is so true, bc if you continue to drive to a exit ramp you most likely will lose your tire and rim. which cost 500+ but that is nothing compared to losing your life or some one else's life, bc sometime if a passer by see a car on the shoulder they will stop and try to help.

I remember reading article in the local paper when I man dropped his cell phone in a storm drain and he tried to get it. so, he reached in head first and got stuck. the water in the rouse up and he drowned in a foot of water.

Vik888

Lets not forget Bill Cosby's son, who stopped his SL on the side of the 101 to change his tire or something. Some criminal pulled over and killed him to steal his wallet or something.

I don't care .. I'd exit and go to a well lit public area.

Or pull over, call AAA and then go hide in the bushes

white07w211

its a siad thing that people dont pay attention like they should. The good thing is that the you guys are ok. The car can be replaced a life can't.

Germancar1

Wow, yeah I remember that. He had a R129 SL. He did what I did, changed his own tire. I remember thinking that there was more to that than just a robbery. Same thing goes for Micheal Jordan's father.

Anyway I had a blowout recently and the IDOT guy (roadside helpers here in IL) said that I'm the only person with a Benz he'd seen change their own tire..lol! He said he stopped for a guy in a Bentley who wouldn't even get out of the car to look at the tire much less change it. He of course was on the phone for someone else to come do it! I guess if I had a Bentley, but then again I like cars and changing a tire is almost like a bonding process. Weird I know.

M

lasvegas99

To bad you didn't have pictures of the Accord. There have been some topics and posts with opinons that E-Classes are somewhat overpriced accords. Seeing the pictures with the two in the same crash I think would help understand the difference. Glad you guys are ok.

Germancar1

People who think like that just have no clue as to the vast, sweating-the-unseen-details engineering that MB puts into their cars.

M

toubia320

Praise god you walked away from that unfortunate crash... On a side note my friend flipped a w210 E320 going 240kmph on a round-about, car completely totaled, him and his buddy walked away w/ barely any scratches...so YES, Mercedes do save lives...

Vik888

definitely. A family friend of ours were in their 1970-something 4 door benz .. I think its a SEL .. got t-boned by a truck, they were injured and hospitalized, but they are alive and well now.

T-boned by a TRUCK .. trust me, if you were in anything else short of a Hummer or Suburban, you would not have survived that.

barrafp

Wow, all these stories are crazy. Here is another story. My sister in her W210 was struck by a car that flew over an island separating a six lane street, and landed upside down on my sisters hood. A passenger in the flying car died and my sister and her passengers (husband and 2 kids) had minor injuries. She only had front airbags and no side airbags. Another foot or if my sister was driving any faster, it would have landed on her roof. Just to show that you can get killed from just about whatever you are doing. You can get killed sitting on a bench reading a book.

Jadecarver

Hi Rockyfeller,

I am sorry to hear about the accident you were involved in. Reading your post motivated me subscribe to mbworld and share a story.

Three weeks ago I made a left turn on a green arrow and a 14 year old boy, who was talking on a cell phone, ran the red light and Tboned my 190E.

The police estimated he was doing 35-40mph. The boy and his 14 year old girlfriend were able to walk away from the accident because their airbags deployed.

The 190E was totalled as it was hit dead center on the passenger side. While the outside of the 190E was a mess, the passenger compartment was compromised by only a few inches.

Because the 190E was able to absorb the energy from the crash I think the 190E did save me from life threatening injuries.

The 190E was our third vehicle and driven part time. The E320 I just purchased will be one of our primary cars.

The reason I posted this comment was to share the reason I purchased another Mercedes.
It was not just for the stylish look.
It was not just for the performance.
It was for all of the safety features that Mercedes builds into their vehicles.

You can be the safest driver on the road and still be involved in a serious accident. That being the case I choose to drive a safe sporty car.

Drive safely

Vik888

Are you sure he was 14? Isn't the legal minimum age to drive solo in Calif 16?

cyclerider

We used to swipe my parents' car in the middle of the night for joyrides when we were 13 or 14. Legal minimum age doesn't mean anything.