A Car I Was Test Driving Crashed. Here's What Happened

Recently I went to test drive a car, because I am potentially in the market for a new vehicle. Unfortunately, my trip to the dealership did not go as planned. In fact, while I was testing it out, the car actually crashed into a concrete footing and it incurred a significant amount of damage.

Here's what happened, and why it didn't end up doing the damage to my checking account it could have. 

Here's how the car crashed

I was excited about looking at this particular car because it advertised a self-parking feature and I'm not always the best at parking. So, when I got into the car, I told the salesperson that was one of the main things I wanted to try out while driving it.

The salesperson said it had been a while since he'd shown someone how to use that feature, but it shouldn't be a big problem. And, he actually looked up a YouTube video to explain how to initiate the self-parking feature and told me how to get started.

As I initiated the process, I commented to him, "OK, so I'm not responsible here if the car crashes, right?" and he laughed. It seemed funny at the time. And everything started out smoothly. The car alerted me that it had identified a spot it could park in, and then began to back in. 

Things were going great as the car zipped around and navigated its way into a pretty tight space in a parking lot that I wouldn't have been super comfortable parking in on my own. In fact, it got right in between the two other cars and backed its way perfectly into the spot. Then it started beeping and, despite me trying to hit the brakes, it proceeded to back into a very large concrete footing, doing a significant amount of damage to the rear of the vehicle. 

Needless to say, no one was very happy about this outcome. 

Here's what happened next

Once we took the damaged car back to the dealership, the salesman went over to his manager to explain what happened. At that time, the manager asked for my auto insurance information because they wanted to hold me responsible for the damages.

I was having absolutely none of this, since the car was parking itself at the time and I had even commented to the salesperson that I wasn't going to be held responsible if something went wrong -- and he was honest enough to admit to the manager. I still had to argue with them and retell the story multiple times, and the manager took the car out himself and tested the self-parking feature himself. This very nearly led to the car crashing a second time, as it stopped split seconds before it hit another vehicle on the lot. 

I got lucky in this case that the car was clearly malfunctioning and having an issue because otherwise, I might have had to give this dealership my insurance and let the insurer pay for the damage. This could have led to my premiums going up. 

So, long story short, if you crash a car at a dealership when you're test driving it, your insurer is probably going to be on the hook -- unless the car crashes somehow itself and you've made it clear that you won't be held accountable if that occurs.