motorised mirror broken off by impact = non repairable - £280 is cheap!
Maybe cyclists with £500 wheels should leave them at home too??
Smashed into a stationary car and broke off wing mirror. Ouch,ouch,ouch
- Thread starter bonker
- Start date
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motorised mirror broken off by impact = non repairable - £280 is cheap!
Maybe cyclists with £500 wheels should leave them at home too??
See post #42 above. ANd that's not cheap. That's expensive gimmickry.
I wasn't suggesting that it wasn't the OP's fault. But the poor chap is hurt, didn't endanger the occupant of the car, and on top of that he's going to have to fork out stupid amounts of money for an unnecessarily expensive bit of kit that everyone knows is likely to get clobbered.
KneesUp
Guru
I destroyed a wing mirror on a Golf a few years back. Admittedly my 'weapon' of choice was 1.3 tonnes of car, but the destruction was impressive given I only hit it with the wing mirror of my car, which survived with barely a scratch. (In my defence I was driving down a road narrowed by parked cars on both sides and a Transit decided it could fit coming the other way. I'm a pretty good judge of such things and decided otherwise, so I had to choose between skimming the mirror or hitting a Transit)
Anyway, two things:
1) I'm glad wing mirrors are designed to shatter on impact. I'd rather be hit by something that breaks than something that doesn't
2) It took me some time to get back to the Golf as I had to park down the road and walked back. The owner was so pleased that I came back (he gets through a lot of wing mirrors, he said) that he said he'd take his car to the cheap place he'd found for wing mirrors rather than the VW dealer. I didn't claim on my insurance as it didn't seem worth it for the loss of no claims and £50 excess, so it cost me £250 - but that was 10 years ago. £280 isn't bad. Don't forget that you get someone to fit it for that too.
Oh, and 3 - I should get insurance. I crashed in to a taxi when I was a kid and the bonnet repairs cost £150 (in 1990) - I got in to a fair bit of trouble for that
Anyway, two things:
1) I'm glad wing mirrors are designed to shatter on impact. I'd rather be hit by something that breaks than something that doesn't
2) It took me some time to get back to the Golf as I had to park down the road and walked back. The owner was so pleased that I came back (he gets through a lot of wing mirrors, he said) that he said he'd take his car to the cheap place he'd found for wing mirrors rather than the VW dealer. I didn't claim on my insurance as it didn't seem worth it for the loss of no claims and £50 excess, so it cost me £250 - but that was 10 years ago. £280 isn't bad. Don't forget that you get someone to fit it for that too.
Oh, and 3 - I should get insurance. I crashed in to a taxi when I was a kid and the bonnet repairs cost £150 (in 1990) - I got in to a fair bit of trouble for that
Not exactly comparable. If a driver comes close enough to my bike to damage the wheels while I am riding it, he stands a pretty good chance of damaging me too.
If I had £500 wheels I wouldn't leave them at home but nor would I mount them sticking out to each side of my vehicle where I know they'd be the first bits to get damaged should anyone misjudge their distances.
Tin Pot
Guru
KneesUp
Guru
On the other hand, wing mirrors don't work nearly so well if you keep them in the boot.
True. Which is an argument for not making them so stupidly expensive, I'd have thought
Boat owners hang tyres off the side of their vessels. Usually they're old tyres, not brand new Y-rated Michelin Pilot Sport.
CopperBrompton
Bicycle: a means of transport between cake-stops
- Location
- London
Um, he's going to have to fork out the cost of a part he broke through his carelessness. Same as a car driver would if they broke an expensive bicycle part.
vernon
Harder than Ronnie Pickering
- Location
- Meanwood, Leeds
It's a specious argument as they are being used as shock absorbers and not for rear view purposes.
As for the cost of replacement electric mirrors - folk who damage them just have to man up and pay for their replacement. It's not for the 'victim' to decide pricing points.
How many cyclists would accept Aldi/Lidl cycle clothing as replacements for their old Rapha clothing after all the cheaper new alternative does the same job as the more expensive stuff.
The anti-motoring/motorist faction sometimes need a dose of reality no matter how unpleasant it might be to them.
He is paying for it. No one has disputed that it was his fault. But in my view it's not reasonable to design unnecessarily expensive and vulnerable peripheries for use on a car on public roads, and then get narked when the damage is expensive. If they were diamond-encrusted, would he be expected to pay for that as well? The proper comparison as regards damage to a bicycle is not being hit by a car, but being walked into by an inattentive pedestrian whilst stationary. I might be irritated if someone walked into me, but I wouldn't think it was reasonable for their mistake to cost them a week's wages if they knocked my gold-plated bar end plug down a drain.
Why is it expensive gimmickry? Nothing gimmickry in a heated electric remote control mirror with outside heat sensor built in, just makes common sense to me. There again I do not still watch black and white TV.
fossyant
Ride It Like You Stole It!
- Location
- South Manchester
Love my heated mirrors for when I do use the car on a frosty morning. Also helps clear rain off them. Not that I use my car much now.
There's nothing intrinsic in the design of a component used for rear view purposes that means it has to cost £400 every time it gets knocked off the car it's attached to. Even if it's heated and electrically controlled, there's no excuse not to make the bit which actually breaks cheap. I have an expensive derailleur mech attached to my expensive frame by a cheap replacable hanger, for exactly the reason that an easily foreseeable and common accident would otherwise result in an expensive repair.
The only reason the car manufacturers don't do the same is that the cost is covered by insurance
