Well, once again it seems my colleague W.D. Crotty has stolen my thunder. He jumped ahead of me on Darling International (AMEX:DAR), and he's done so again with Copart (NASDAQ:CPRT). That means I had to find a whole new angle to discuss, which is easy with Copart because it's in the rather unique business of auctioning off wrecked cars, mostly to licensed vehicle dismantlers, rebuilders, repair licensees, used vehicle dealers, and exporters.

I first came across the concept of the salvage vehicle market last year, when I was searching the Internet for a used car. Fortunately, I knew what to expect after visiting the Fool's Buying a Car section. Over on Yahoo!'s (NASDAQ:YHOO) car sales portal, I found a large number of surprisingly cheap cars by automakers such as Toyota (NYSE:TM), Nissan (NASDAQ:NSANY), and Mercedes, part of Daimler-Chrysler (NYSE:DCX). Now, some of these ads failed to mention the car was a salvage job. Naughty, naughty! But, through a service called Carfax.com, I was able to get a complete vehicle history for every candidate and learn which ones had been trashed via accident, flooding, inferno, or one of the 10 plagues.

That led me to Copart. Because America is a capitalist society, markets for every conceivable service will spring up when a need arises. After insurance companies pay out for your crushed car, they have to do something with it, right? Thus arose Copart and competitor Insurance Auto Auctions (NASDAQ:IAAI).

W.D. Crotty (whom I call "W.D. 40") pointed out how good a business Copart is. But he forgot to mention a major reason Copart is likely to always be a good business. There were 6 million auto accidents last year. Sixmillion. We are a nation of distracted drivers, after all. Cell phones, drive-throughs, kids, radios, TVs on the roof -- it's too much. Add in the "arrogance factor" of snotty rich people in a BMW or Mercedes disobeying traffic laws -- not that I'm at all bitter about and more likely to notice the double frustration of being cut off by a car I can't afford -- and you have a witches' brew that Copart finds rather tasty.

As do its investors.

Fool contributor Lawrence Meyers owns no shares in the companies mentioned here but insists he has been cut off more often by Mercedeses and BMWs than any other vehicle make.