Hello all. We had a nice weekend camping for the Easter Long Weekend with decent weather and a nice spot in a newer RV park. We held an Easter egg hunt for our 7 year old son and had a great Easter dinner last night. Everything in the trailer was great for our first camping weekend of the year.
We packed up and headed home this morning. We decided to take a more rural route home over the main freeway because we hadn't taken the route in several years and decided the change of scenery would be nice. This route is full of farms and large acreages and is very pleasant.
About 45 minutes into our trip I noticed a white car approaching very quickly on a side road towards the highway we were on. I let off the throttle and watched and saw him slow so I felt it was OK to carry on. As we approached the intersection he did not stop at the stop sign on the side road and pulled out onto the highway; I blew the horn and he cranked it into oncoming traffic while I cranked the wheel right to avoid a collision. I didn't crank too hard because the ditches in the area are very deep and could be deadly. Our truck avoided contact with the car , however he made contact with the driver's front corner of the fiver and he caused body damage about 2/3 of the way down the trailer and also messed up the frames of compartment doors, water heater door, and the centre caps of the aluminum wheels. I would estimate there to be about $2k in damage. Our family was not hurt. The vehicle he was driving was a 2015 VW Passat TDI that I would estimate has $4-5k damage and had to be towed away from the scene.
The other driver was an 18 year old new driver with his sister. I asked them if they were OK which they were. I then advised him that they could have been killed had this been a more direct impact. They were both very shaken up.
I believe that he felt he could get ahead of us and his inexperience showed otherwise.
We were very fortunate to have 3 witnesses to the accident, 1 of them being an off duty police officer. The police attended the accident and found the other driver to be 100% at fault.
As much as now we deal with having to get our trailer repaired, we are very thankful that nobody was injured. It goes to show how quickly these things happen and life changes.....
2013 Ram 3500 Megacab DRW Laramie 4x4, 6.7L Cummins, G56, 3.73, Maximum Steel, black lthr, B&W RVK3670 hitch, Retrax, Linex, and a bunch of options incl. cargo camera
2008 Corsair Excella Platinum 34.5 CKTS fifth wheel with winter package & disc brakes