E53 Accidents - Share Your Story

[e30mpower]

I just got into my first (second, if you count the deer) accident with the X5 this week. Needless to say, I feel pretty shitty. In six years, I've not had an at-fault accident once in that car. So, I'm going to share my story and hope that those reading this will share theirs, to make others feel lucky to be driving one of the safest cars on the road, even after fifteen years.

I was on the Interstate headed to North Charlotte, doing my usual thing, cruise at 85-90 mph in the far left lane (I'm not an asshole, I change lanes when someone faster than me comes up or whenever I'm done passing others). I get behind this red Pontiac thing and I've already braked to her speed, but all of a sudden she slams on brakes.

Immediately, I put my brake pedal to the floor, I feel the seatbelt pull me tighter and everything that was in the back seat comes flying forward. At about 60-70mph I see that I'm going to hit this chick, so I subconsciously steer into the concrete lane divider on my left, scrape my side-view mirror against it, then I feel a huge "pop," and my instrument cluster lights up like a Christmas tree, with DSC, ABS, and BRAKE lights all illuminated.

Then I feel the impact with the Pontiac. Very slight, almost insignificant. I look down and see that I'm still at about 40mph. Chick pulls over, I pull over, and we survey the damage. She escapes with some Alpine White paint on her misaligned bumper. I've got a blown tire, scraped rims, and a missing headlight washer cover, but that's it. How I didn't have body damage I have no idea. Before handing me a ticket for "too fast for conditions," which was deserved, the cop actually said "If you weren't in an X5, things could've been a lot different."