Tag: Seattle Auto Body Shop

There are many reasons that people get into collisions out on the road. What follows is a list of the biggest dangers that drivers face:

Distracted Driving: This can come in many forms. Big culprits include driving while texting or talking on the phone, or rubbernecking at the site of a collision.
Fatigue: Your awareness and reaction time are both compromised when you are tired. Don’t be afraid of pulling over for a nap if you really need to.
Driving Under the Influence: Collisions resulting from alcohol or other inebriating substances are among the most deadly.
Reckless Driving: Whether you’re speeding, or simply driving more aggressively, you are at a greater risk of getting into an accident.
Environmental Hazards: Some hazards are out of our control, like roads that are slippery from ice or rain. Take particular care during icy conditions, high winds, or during the first rain after an extended dry period.

Should your best efforts fail you and you end up in a collision, bring your car to our auto body shop in Seattle for repairs.

It’s never pleasant to be pulled over while driving. Unfortunately, with all the rules that we need to obey while out on the road, it can sometimes be difficult to keep track of them all. What follows is a list of the five most common violations that police agencies report; try being mindful of these, and you’ll be able to keep your traffic stops to a minimum:

• Speeding: This one is a no-brainer. Speeding is one of the easiest safety violations to detect, and account for about 34 million tickets in the United States every year. Keep an eye on your speed, and you’re in good shape.
• Distracted Driving: These violations include driving while texting, eating, or performing a similar action that threatens to keep your hands off the wheel or your concentration off the road. Texting is apparently the top violation, with teenagers being the main offenders. If you have a young driver in your household, be sure to advise him or her on proper phone use.
• Equipment Violations: It is fairly easy for a cop to spot violations in your car’s equipment. Illegal window tints are the biggest violation, followed by burned out lights, dangerously broken windshields, and expired tags on your license plates.
• Tailgating and Reckless Lane Changes: Tied for number four, these two violations include cutting off another driver, changing lanes without looking, and driving too close to another vehicle.

These violations are not just potentially costly if you get pulled over; they’re also dangerous, and put you at risk of serious accidents. Should the worst happen, consider bringing your car down to Greenwood’s auto body shop in Seattle.

Your bumper can take quite a beating. This is the part of your car most prone to damage in a collision. In some of the worse cases, you may have your bumper completely fall off after an accident. Some people will lose their bumpers and continue to drive around without it for an indefinite period, thinking that the expense that goes into replacing it is not worthwhile. This is a mistake.

Indeed, there is a reason that your bumper is so prone to damage. Its purpose is to cushion the blow of collisions, preventing damage to the more valuable parts of your car and the passengers inside. Thousands of low-speed collisions happen every day, with roughly 14% of all auto damage claims coming in the form of small, parking garage crashes. If you don’t have a bumper to absorb the impact, even these small nuisances can turn into hundreds of dollars in damage for your engine.

When you lose a bumper, don’t leave your car more vulnerable than it needs to be. Bring it to our Seattle auto body shop for the repairs that it needs.

Chances are good that any driver is going to need to have a vehicle towed now and then. You’ll generally have a professional take care of the towing for you, but it’s an easy enough matter to tow yourself should the need arrive. In such an event, keep the following tips in mind to avoid doing any extra damage to your car:

• Attach the Chain in a Secure Place: Do not attach the cable to your bumper! You want to find a sturdy place on the undercarriage of your car to loop the tow cable around. In most cases, you should be at least double-looping the cable. Attach the other end of the cable to the trailer hitch of the towing vehicle, or a secure location on its undercarriage if you don’t have a trailer hitch.
• Put Your Car in Neutral: Park the car you are to tow until you have the cable attached, then put it in neutral and make sure that the parking brake is disengaged.
• Place a Sign on Your Car: It helps to have a sign in the rear window of the car you are towing to alert other drivers that the car is being towed.
• Vacate the Towed Car: Nobody should be in the car that you are towing!
• Drive Slow: Don’t drive any faster than 45 mph; preferably, you should be going even slower.
• Keep Trips Short: Ideally, you should only tow a car as far as you absolutely need to, like to a gas station or an auto body shop.

With all that many of us spend on maintaining our conventional cars, the prospect of an electric car become more and more attractive. After all, an electric car’s engine is far simpler than an internal combustion engine. A conventional engine has hundreds of moving parts, while an electric engine has about half a dozen. Fewer moving parts means that there is less to break down, and they are all the easier to repair when they do break down. It is estimated that maintaining an electric car’s engine costs about a third of what it costs to maintain an internal combustion engine.

This is until it comes time to replace the battery. An electric car’s battery will gradually lose its ability to hold a charge. You can likely expect a typical battery to function for over 100,000 miles before its driving range diminishes below an acceptable level. It’s when it comes time to replace this battery that you’ll experience a hefty maintenance bill.

Whatever your vehicle’s maintenance needs may be, consider Greenwood’s auto body shop in Seattle.

As we emerge into yet another new year, we look forward to the new technological wonders that it may bring. Some people are asking, “Where is my self-driving Google car?” Long promised by the internet giant, this automotive breakthrough is an attractive prospect for efficient roadways and reduced traffic accidents. Unfortunately, there are simply too many reasons that it will probably never come to be.

One of the harsh realities is that the Google car would have to run on a computer with a higher intelligence than any is currently capable of. While the company boasts of the over 700,000 miles that their car has safely driven, these represent the same few thousand miles around the Google headquarters that they have mapped out so far. With roughly four million miles of road to map out in the US, as well as the advanced object detection the machine needs to avoid obstacles, there is a long way to go.

So, for the time being, it would seem that we will all need to be satisfied with the occasional bit of human error on our roads. When this human error gets the best of your vehicle, bring it to our auto body shop in Seattle.

Putting together a winter emergency kit for your car is a tricky prospect. After all, you have less space than you have for your home kit, and the more weight you take on equals more gas being burned while you drive. Therefore, anything beyond the typical emergency kit needs to be carefully thought out.

Ideally, your car should be equipped to get you through being stranded in the snow for one day. Your primary concerns should be staying warm and hydrated. Food is good to have, but less of a priority, since you should be able to go for a while without eating. You can’t go as long without drinking water. Further, though it may seem feasible to rely on the snow around you for emergency water, this is going to further sap your precious body heat in situations where your heating system has failed. Therefore, try having a bottle of water and a thick, winter blanket handy.

You can also benefit from having a few other emergency supplies, like sand, an ice brush, an ice scraper, and snow chains.

A blizzard is nothing to trifle with. With a strong enough snowstorm, an entire city can be shut down. It therefore is not the best thing to get caught in when you are driving your car. So, should you find yourself on the road when the worst of the winter strikes, consider the following safety tips:

• Plan ahead. If there’s a risk of a blizzard, try driving during the day. Have a cell phone and an emergency kit available. Drive with an able-bodied passenger, if possible.
• Visibility is an issue. Keep your headlights and windshield wipers turned on.
• Ice builds more quickly on bridges and overpasses. Double the four-second following rule, and drive slowly on dangerous areas.
• Stick to main roads wherever you can, avoiding back roads.
• If you go into a skid, turn your steering wheel in the same direction as your rear wheels skid. This will counterbalance your skid and help to get your car under control.

Should the blizzard get the better of your car, bring it to Greenwood’s auto body shop in Seattle for quick and effective repairs.

When you’re preparing your car for the winter, don’t overlook your heating system. Though it may seem like largely a comfort issue, and secondary to bigger safety concerns like your tires, brakes, and engines, there is a lot to be said for this system.

First of all, staying comfortable while you drive is an important part of staying safe. If you find yourself shivering uncontrollably, you’re less likely to be focusing on your driving and you may even jerk the wheel unexpectedly at a bad time. When you drive for extended periods of time in bitter cold weather, it may even turn into a health concern.

Further, if your heating system isn’t working, it may mean that you are unable to keep your windows defrosted. You need a functional defroster to assure that you can see where you’re going when the weather goes cold. Therefore, though it can be costly to replace a bad heater coil, it is a worthwhile thing to look into. Talk to our auto body shop in Seattle for more information.

If you have an SUV or similar vehicle with a four-wheel drive feature, you may be looking forward to putting it to good use this winter. Between thick snowfalls and mountain ski trips, this is a time when your wheels are working overtime. Of course, you don’t want to end up reaching for the four-wheel drive when you need it and finding that it isn’t working properly. You’re probably not using it over the summer, so a faulty four-wheel drive can sneak up on you. This is why it is important to check your system before the start of the cold season.

It is also important to remember that, while a four-wheel drive system can greatly improve your traction on snow and ice from a stationary position, it is not a magical system that will allow you to speed about like a racer on a frozen street. When you apply your brakes, your tires will not grip the pavement any better than you could without four-wheel drive. Various four-wheel drive systems work differently; check your vehicle’s owner’s manual for the best environment in which to use your system.