subject: Are Fender Benders Harmless? [print this page] While fender benders - a small wreck where no one or vehicle was seriously injured - may not seem like a big deal, there are several situations where these collisions can cause hidden damage or problems down the road. Just because your vehicle only seems to have suffered minimally, a visual inspection of damage may only tell a small part of the story.
If you find yourself in an accident, even a low speed one, it is important to have your vehicle checked for damage. Some of the side effects of a low impact collision may be obvious, but there are a lot of problems that will take a while to truly show the damage that has been inflicted on your vehicle. Additionally, most of these problems are very expensive to fix when they are let to become worse. If you wait to take your car into a shop until after issues have developed, it can make problems much more difficult to repair. Here are some examples of damage that can occur after a low speed accident.
Air Bag Deployment
Cars are built today with safety in mind; this means that vehicles are built to save the people in the car without consideration to damage done to the vehicle. This policy has saved countless lives, but it also means that automobiles are designed to remove impact from passengers and causes more expensive damage to occur to the vehicle. One example of this is airbags. While very few people will question the need for airbags, they are incredibly costly to replace. To begin with, they explode, damaging anything in front of them, such as steering wheels and dashboards. Further, the cost of a replacement airbag is high and even low speed fender benders can cause them to deploy.
Alignment Issues
One of the less obvious issues that can develop due to a fender bender is tire alignment issues. While it may not be obvious driving away from an accident, alignment issues can slowly get worse and more advanced, which makes them even more expensive to repair. Alignment issues can cause your vehicle to pull in one direction or another, cause issues when trying to balance your tires, and may potentially have a detrimental effect on the smoothness of your vehicle's ride. Fenders and bumpers both have padding underneath them to help keep these types of issues from cropping up, but if you are hit at the right angle, alignment issues can occur. These issues frequently require frame machines to resolve and that can be very expensive work.
Electrical Problems
Electrical issues can develop due to even low speed accidents. The wiring that runs through your vehicle is delicate, and small amounts of damage can cause a short in the electrical wires. Damage can also occur to connectors and your battery when you have a fender bender. This can lead to problems with anti theft systems, electric windows, locks and a variety of other systems. These shorts can be incredibly expensive to locate and fix, so it is important to have your car checked after an accident, even if issues did not seem present at the time.
