Have You Been Dinged?

Written By Donna Engle

You leave your car in the parking lot while you work or shop or have lunch. When you return, you find a scrape or dent where someone’s car door hit yours. Or someone backed into your car and left the evidence on your bumper. Or a vandal ran his keys along your car, taking off the paint.

You have been dinged, an informal term for a small dent or nick in a car body. You are not alone. Maryland motorists reported an average of nearly 5,000 parking lot accidents in each of the last three years, according to the State Highway Administration (SHA). And those are just the accidents reported to police. No one knows how many similar accidents go unreported.

None of the insurance firms we contacted could provide national, state or local statistics about the problem, but a study by eBay Motors and Britain’s ICM Research reports that drivers in the UK, where there are 112 million fewer cars than in the U.S., spent some $9 billion on “dent and run” incidents last year.

In Carroll County, motorists reported an average of 84 parking lot accidents a year from 2005 through 2007. There were 99 accidents reported in 2005, 71 in 2006 and 82 last year.

If you are lucky, the person who dinged your car left a note with contact information. Often, motorists just drive off, perhaps unaware they damaged another car.

Maj. Phil Kasten of the Carroll County Sheriff’s Department pointed out that it is a violation of state law not to leave your name and address, vehicle registration number and the name and address of your vehicle’s owner for the other driver. Failing to leave the information after hitting an unoccupied car makes the accident a hit and run.

“Sometimes motorists are confused. They think if nobody’s there, they don’t have to stay,” Maj. Kasten said. Drivers may look around, then take off if they don’t see anyone. “The majority of our parking lot accidents are hit and runs,” he added.

Locally, reports of parking lot accidents are running higher this year than in 2007. The Sheriff’s Department investigated 88 parking lot accidents through July 31 of this year. The figures give only a partial picture of the number of ding accidents. If there is only minor damage and no information about a possible suspect, the sheriff’s deputies do not file reports. The data also exclude parking lot accidents in Westminster, Sykesville and Taneytown, where police calls are not dispatched through the Sheriff’s Department.

Westminster has 12 city-owned surface parking lots and two parking garages, in addition to private lots such as shopping center parking areas, the largest total of any municipality in the county. Neither Westminster, Sykesville, nor Taneytown police keep records of ding accidents. Lt. Brian Costello of the Taneytown Police Department explained that police are required to file reports only when an accident results in personal injury or a car must be towed. Sykesville Police Chief John Williams estimated that fewer than 5 per cent of the motor vehicle accidents in town are parking lot accidents.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety reports that 20 percent of vehicle crash claims result from parking lot accidents. But some car owners opt not to file claims for minor damage.

Motorists who drive away in their damaged cars and decide later to file a police report present a challenge, Maj. Kasten said. Many insurance companies require a police report of the incident to process a claim. But when a driver has delayed reporting an incident, “Certainly from an investigative standpoint it makes it more difficult for police and we’re limited in what we can investigate,” he said.

Ding accident victims who have high deductibles on their insurance policies may have to decide whether to have the damage repaired, a decision that can be affected by repair costs.

“When you have these little parking lot dents the size of a quarter, and I tell them $500, people look at me like I’ve got two heads,” said Charles E. Garver, body shop manager at Davis Buick-GMC Truck in Westminster. But the job can be time-consuming. Technicians must remove the dent, apply rust preventive, primer and sealer, base coat, clear coat, hardener and ultraviolet ray protector to restore the paint.

“Auto body repair is an art. Basically you’re sculpting something back to get it straight,” said Matt Gardner, who has taught auto body repair at the Carroll County Career and Technology Center for eight years. “You’re taking a vehicle that was wrecked and bringing it back to pre-accident condition,” he said.

Gardner’s students learn to erase dents by using stud guns to weld studs into the dent, then tap the dent out with a slide hammer. They cut off the studs, grind the surface flat and apply body filler, then sand it to prepare it for painting. The paint technician should spray the entire panel, Gardner said.

Sometimes it is more cost effective to replace parts rather than repair them, Gardner said. Auto bodies today are made with thinner metal than in the past, to decrease the weight of the car and increase gas mileage. If a car’s hood is damaged in a collision, it may be more economical to replace the hood than to do the repairs necessary to restore it to original condition, he said.

A motorist may be able to reduce his repair cost by contracting for paintless dent removal. Davis Buick-GMC Truck does not use the paintless technique, but Garver acknowledged that it meets some car owners’ needs.
“If you just want it bumped out so it doesn’t look so bad, that’s okay. But if you’ve got a brand new car and you treat it like your firstborn, you might want to spend the $500,” Garver said.

Paintless dent removal is not part of the curriculum at the Career and Technology Center. Gardner views it as a technique that can repair a dented car to 95 percent of its original condition, and may be a good option for a car owner with something like hail damage that has left the car covered with dents. “Where a body shop would charge thousands of dollars (to repair hail damage), the price [for paintless dent removal]can be less than $1,000,” he said.

Materials and labor are the bases of body shop charges. Materials costs have gone up, Garver said. Some paints now cost $129 a pint, he said.

Labor charges for auto body work are lower than for mechanical work. A single body repair may be billed at different rates for paint, body, mechanical and frame labor, said Jordan Hendler, executive director of the Washington Metropolitan Area Auto Body Association. The association does not publish information on prevailing rates in Maryland.

An informal survey of body shops in Carroll County showed labor charges for body work generally at $40 an hour, with a few shops charging $38. Labor charges for paint work varied more widely, from $24 to $40 an hour.

Car doors seem to be the most vulnerable part of a car’s body in suffering dings, said Bill Wilson, associate vice president of the Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of America (IIABA). His organization does not keep records that would support a generalization about where a car is most likely to be hit, but from his observation, “By far the most common is opening a door into someone else’s door,” he said.

Wilson writes an online “ask the expert” column for independent insurance agents and brokers. Of several thousand questions a year, at least one a week relates to parking lot accidents, he said.

A frequent question about whether a specific accident falls under collision or comprehensive insurance coverage comes from agents trying to save their customers some money, Wilson said. If damage from a parking lot accident is covered under comprehensive insurance, the cost to the car owner will be lower than under collision coverage. For example, if the car was “keyed” or otherwise vandalized, the damage is more likely to fall under the policy holder’s comprehensive coverage.

Wilson does not have professional insider’s expertise on how to keep a car from getting that dinged and scratched look. His personal technique for crowded mall parking lots: “Park further away from the store.”