Just a "friendly tap"

Well, maybe not sooo friendly.
So I'm driving down 28 on my way home, and the truck in front of me locks up the brakes, skidding a good 10 feet. (If you go now, you can see the skid marks on 28 south, just after Machen road in the 2nd from right hand lane.) I manage to stop without hitting them, but the woman behind me (who hadn't seen me starting to brake) nailed us. Certainly not a tremendous impact but as you can see below, it punctured my bumper at one spot.

The worst part about it all, is that it seems that ~I~ will have to pay for the repairs despite being rear-ended. The police didn't write any citations, basically gave us "exchange of information" forms, and then left because "No one was injured, and both vehicles were drivable". We'll see what the insurance people say when I call them BACK on Monday (I did call the main number, and have reported it, and have my claim number). I may wind up not submitting a claim to repair the car if the difference between my deductible (+ the raise in rates which I'm sure would happen ~completely unrelated~ to this incident) and the cost of the repair. I was trying to get the cost of a new rear bumper, but apparently it's some kind of highly prized information, because I couldn't seem to find website that would say "Murano 05 - rear bumper == $XXX".

Any accident you can walk away from... I'm happy that it's only a bumper and no one was hurt. Not like the "Dukes of Hazard" crash I had back in... 1998? I can't even remember the year now. It was a three car caravan, with us in the front. I was the front passenger in a Mercury Villager (minivan), headed south on 95 for a 2 week beach vacation. At some point the driver either lost consciousness or went into some kind of non-responsive state (it was about 8ish in the morning, and we had just had breakfast) and we started to drift off the road towards the median. Now, this is on 95 south where the median is a depression filled with trees. After shouting at the driver to wake up and trying to get his attention, I decided to turn the wheel to keep us from plowing into said trees at 70+ mph (foot still on pedal). I just wanted to get us parallel to the road, and to that end I succeeded. Unfortunately, I did not have anymore time for strategies at that point, as we ran straight into one of the state trooper access roads. These access roads are at the level of the highways on either side of the median, and so are raised up a bit from where we hit it. At this point in time, I and the other two people in the minivan are airborne. (I think we managed to clip the top of the speed limit sign on the other side of the access road as we were going over.) I had my split second of "Oh. So ~this~ is how I'm going to die.", before we hit the ground. The people behind us later told me they thought we had stuck the landing and we're gonna be ok. Until the flipping/rolling started. I think we made 2 complete revolutions or so, and ultimately landed back on our wheels somehow. At one point my entire arm was out the window (the guy behind me saw it) as the minivan started to roll that way, I must've pulled it in or something, because the guy behind us was sure I was gonna come up with no arm at all. Apparently my shoulder had been dragged a little due to the grass and mud stains on my shirt across the back. Got out of the van, to assess myself. All limbs moved, no major gashes or blood loss, tons of small cuts and/or embedded pieces of glass, could feel where I'd hit my head on the window/ground, and suspected my should was out of socket (it had been). Checking on the others I found the driver with a red nose from the airbag, and a sore right elbow, from where the cooler had hit him. The passenger in the back seat, not so lucky. She wound up having 3 broken ribs, and a suborbital fracture. They needed the jaws of life to cut the van open in order to extract her. A bumpy ambulance ride later (btw if they ever tell you to get on the back board for transport, just do it. Don't argue, don't make a fuss. Just get on the board.) we're at the hospital. Since I did not want to ride on the back board, I was put into the triage room (for 2.5+ hours) in a wheelchair, covered in dirt, grass, and blood much to the semi-horror of some of the other people waiting. Now for those that know me and my constant barrage of (usually weak) humor, a crisis situation is no different. In fact, left with nothing else to do it sort of drives me on. So here is this seemingly horrid crash victim making really bizarre jokes (normal for me) and finding the entire situation ridiculous and therefore amusing. I think someone finally got up and told them to take me in the back, but I'm not sure. They patched us up (mostly) and I spent most of my two-week vacation, on meds and locked in the beach house, at least the sangria was fresh.
That accident pretty much makes this incident look like the minor inconvenience it is.