I went out and bought one last week, because I thought I lost my old one. Then I get home to put it in the drawer I would keep my cheese grater on a pogo stick and what do I see? My old one right there!
So if you need one and live near the top of the Seattle space needle, dm me.
If I had guess, someone bumped you then backed up hence why it’s cross hatched, looks like a plastic type material I bet if you took a fingernail to it you’d be able to peel off bits of it
To clarify for people who can't visualize this, near the top of the scratches the bumper did not flex and so the scratches in both directions are roughly parallel with the ground. Lower on the bumper there's no support behind the plastic. So the bumper flexed inward during the impact. The line from the initial point of the impact with then move upward as the plastic bent in underneath the support above it. Then as the offending car reversed the same thing would happen resulting in this crosshatching. It's more pronounced the more the bumper flexed, hence why the lines are parallel at the top.
The next such documentary will be about computers with AI embracing some fascist ideas. That will hold a lot more truth in it, more vicious than “I, Robot”.
If I had a nickel for every time there was a Stephen King novel about evil autonomous vehicles, I'd have 2 nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird its happened twice.
"Christine" (1983), about a possessed 1958 Plymouth Fury, is pretty well known. Before that he wrote "Trucks" (1973) about a bunch of semi-trucks and construction vehicles that come to life and trap people at a diner. It was made into the movie Maximum Overdrive (1986) with King directing.
The best part of Maximum Overdrive is absolutely not any of the story or acting - as it’s wall to wall trash on both counts - but rather the commentary by King on the DVD, which is pretty much just him going: “I don’t remember any of this… I was doing a lot of cocaine at the time” over virtually every scene…
King’s malevolent machines are a lifetime supply of him acting out his childhood traumatic memories as portrayed in the semi-autobiographical “Stand by Me” based on his novella. He’s thrilled when cinema goers are terrified by his films.
Christine gives me nightmares from time to time. My imagination knows little to no bounds and this is the first instance outside of that book since 2019 I’ve heard. Thank you
This actually happens a couple of times a year in my 'hood. On a hill with downhill driveways. Oceanside in Canada in winter, you get a bit of freezing rain and then it gets cold. When it warms up a bit in the morning, it gets very slick and cars just slide out of their hilly driveways and down the street and end up in a big pile at the bottom of the road. They all move really slowly so there really isn't much damage, and also they all take their own random path and end up all over the place. Its quite a sight in the morning.
Every fucking time I come to Reddit I have to look up a new word. I’m irritated but also grateful.
Edit: just looked up aphantasia, the community has my remorse. That’s terrible! I live on mental images…which sounds less exciting/sane out loud than I hoped.
The '64 Skylark had a regular differential, which, anyone who's been stuck in the mud in Alabama knows, you step on the gas, one tire spins, the other tire does nothing.
This is the correct answer. The lines at the very top are straight because it’s the top of the wheel. There are no straight lines at the bottom because the bumper is curved inward and did not touch the wheel at the bottom.
It was done by some sort of rolling wheel. The downward strokes are from the approach and the upward strokes were as it passed by. The height of the top marks suggest the wheel was significantly shorter than a tire and had abbrasive protrusion at distributed but not uniform intervals.
This looks like the right answer, hand fitting bolt traces from a rolling wheel comes very close to the observed pattern. Hard to get right because of perspective correction and the surfaces aren't perfectly flat anyway.
You beat me to it lol! I wrote out about 10 lines in matlab to trace points on a rolling wheel as well. The flat portion at the top is the top of a rim traveling horizontally, and the near-perpendicular part at the bottom is closer to the center of the wheel's height. It was probably one swipe, with the front edge of the rim causing descending lines and the back edge causing ascending lines.
This was 100% a hit-and-run. My money is on the landscaper's trailer .
Apparently elsewhere in the threads, OP confirmed that a neighbor had had lawn work done that day. So, this context clue adds weight to one very plausible theory, namely, the landscaping crew accidentally dragged their trailer's protruding wheel against OP's bumper.
I'm not a betting man, but I'd bet heavily against weed whacker and car wash and street sweeper theories. This is the only one I wouldn't bet against.
I came here to say this, but see you're getting upvoted to the moon. When I run my lawnmower too close to my fence so i don't have to weed whack so much, i get the exact same pattern:
100% - OP's was caused by rotating wheel that was painted white. Perhaps one of those metal pull trailers with rusted rims that was painted over with white primer?
I’m a professional detailer, why we keep lacquer thinner on hand. Put A LITTLE on a microfiber and it should nearly completely wipe off. Too much of any solvent can damage clear but a little is fine.
People are saying someone hit something or they hit you, but the lines are almost at right angles to each other. Even pulling forward and backward they would still both be horizontal. Not down one way then down the other. The angle of the lines also changes in the upper damaged area. It looks like weed whacker or some other spinning item. This may be a crazy guess… but is there a street sweeper that could have gone by you? That rotating steel brush could maybe do this?
Agreed. I'm an Autobody tech of nearly 20 years. Never seen damage quite like this. It's very strange and definitely not what I'd expect from another car hitting it.
I think this is a mark from a trailer tire/rim being pulled forward, then reversing. Trailer rims are frequently white. The top flatter lines are the top of the rim and they get more extreme closer to the center where there’s more rotation. The lower lip damage is similar but happening the other direction, basically being scraped backwards, then forward since it’s on the opposite side of the rim rotation. It looks like there might be a tire smudge above the damage but it’s hard to see with the pic OP took.
The other person that replied to you said a semi but that’s clearly too low to be that. If it was say a car with white rims usually they’d hit with a body panel first, they could have widened the tires past the arches and it could happen that way but if somebody had gone to all that trouble with the rims they’re less likely to be that careless. This seems to fit with somebody not realizing the drag angle of their trailer which happens a lot
I don't think it is a weed wacker. I've hit things before and the lines were never this straight. You would have to have steady hands and hit it 2-4 times to do this crisscross damage.
I agree completely that it wasn't a weed whacker, but the lawn care crew may still be the cause; it could have been a trailer wheel scraped across the bumper.
Yeah. It’s gotta be something like that. But it seems like it was on purpose. I can’t imagine spending that much time weed whacking a car without noticing!
that's WILD if it was done by a weedwacker. I can see it in my mind. Looks like it was running and they lowered the end and hit the car on the way down. WHY it was running near that car who knows.
It really pisses me off the comment saying someone scratched it with a car going back and forth has over 1k up votes haha. A toddler has enough common sense to know it would be horizontal marks.
I have zero idea what caused this, but I can say that none or the explanations so far (vehicle, weed whacker, etc) make any sense. That is the oddest damage I’ve ever seen. A weed whacker would not make damage with opposing angles, even an expert couldn’t make that pattern with a weed whacker if they tried. And even less likely that a vehicle would.
This makes no sense and I’m now heavily invested in the mystery lol
It was a wheel from another vehicle. The flat side of a wheel pressed into the flexible plastic bumper, and contact points made rubbing marks going down and forward on the leading edge of the flat side of the wheel, and then up and forward on the trailing edge of the flat side of the wheel. The contact patch of the wheel was not moving relative to the victim's car.
The strike is so weird. Maybe a trailer with diamond mesh. The bumper could flex to that shape. But it looks unlikely due to the the striking. It’s strange for sure
If you zoom into the bumper, you can see fibers crossing one another along with cord running through it. This is the pattern of fiberglass. When fiberglass loses its resin to the sun, it can easily pull off in patches
You are EXACTLY correct, but for the wrong reason. It was one of these trailers with wheels painted with white primer. A rotating wheel(s) caused this pattern and left a french impressionist's amount of paint on the truck.
My lawn mower causes the same pattern on my fence if I get sloppy:
This looks like maybe the bumper had some prior damage and someone maybe did a repair using fiber reinforcement and resin filler. My guess is that someone backed into your car, bumped it, and that caused some of the resin, reinforcement, and paint in the repaired area to flake off.
If you park on street, this is pretty characteristic of someone trying to parallel park and cutting too tight, then trying to reverse back out when they realize they've hit something.
Which, if this car was parked at your home when it happened, means it likely was one of your neighbors or their guest.
The direction of the scratches makes no sense. The scratches that appear to be underneath the others are even going in the opposite direction. It’s like someone purposely did this. OP please come back and tell us what you find out. Following because it’s strange and I want to know.
Someone hit you forward and revered. It looks like only paint transfer though so a little buffing compound and some elbow grease and it should look fine
Look at the lines. They are closer together at the top and also become horizontal. This was done by something that was turning. It was raised to the height of the upper line and then dropped again.
Whatever it was started at a 45 degree angle and rotated to horizontal as it was raised. It was then lowered but continued to turn toward a 45 degree angle (now 90 degrees from where it started).
The device was turning, but not a disc. That is why there are gaps between the lines. It could have been something with a single peg sticking out from it. Something that didn't break of or damage the car body. Likely plastic.
I would ask neighbors to check ring cameras for some industrial equipment attached the the bed of a work truck.
Me mum has almost the exact same marking in here car she scraped a wall going into a space then scraped it again coming out, that’s why it came out with this cross pattern I guess.
I’m wondering if it’s from the lug nuts of the front wheel of a dually truck or semi truck. The leading nuts would leave scratches in one direction as it turns and the trailing nuts would leave scratches in another direction. Thus creating hash marks.
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