I was driving south bound on Pacific Coast Hwy in Malibu around 4:30pm with my friend Danae. I was cruising in the right lane going around 60 in a 55 zone when I looked ahead and saw an obviously slow moving gardening truck so I signaled and merged into the left lane about 100 yards before the truck.
Right when I was about 5 yards from the truck which must have been going around 30mph, I saw a turn signal come on right in from and it was a black Altima that the truck was following very closely so it obscured the Altima from view until I was right there. The Altima proceeded to merge into my lane right in front of me and since there was a center divider, I had no exit and I hit the brakes instantly and just tried my best to hit the car square on to lessen the impact and damage a bit.
I glanced down at my speedometer and saw 40mph right before impact and then boom. I immediately made sure Danae was alright, I pulled over and it was a hard enough impact to where I thought the entire front end of my car was completely smashed. But as the pictures show, I could not believe my eyes. Literally, nothing except the bumper was touched, not even the hood or CF lip. There is one 3 inch crack in my bumper and that's it. My seat belt tensioners fired, cracking two interior panels and my airbags deployed but the Altima was seriously damaged.
He said that he was going to pass a gold Camry in front of him but didn't see me when he moved into that lane even though I had my headlights on.
Basically, the fact that I decided to hit the person square on means that there is no way State Farm can prove the other driver made an improper lane change. If I had more damage on the passenger's side, then they could make a case that the guy was still merging when we made contact, removing me from fault. Soooo, I'm going to buy an OEM platinum graphite bumper off the Z forum to that no paint work has to be done and will obviously have to remove my CF lip, the radiator support is untouched from what I can tell and the driver's headlight is slightly angled down but the headlight itself is fine.
Everyone was ok and that is what matters, I've never had an accident but I was proud that I stayed so calm and surprisingly did not care about what happened to my car at that moment. Now I definitely do care and am a bit upset it all happened.
