Correct car repair after an accident guarantees that the safety level offered at the factory is almost completely restored
Repairing a car after an accident is expensive. Insurers often underestimate the value of damage, putting drivers in a dilemma: hand the car to a cassation or repair it “at cost”. For economic reasons, Polish drivers more often choose the latter option. The cashless repair service popular in Poland, however, encourages to lower the quality of the car’s reconstruction. The relationship is simple, the more the workshop reduces costs, the higher its profit will be.
In our country, professional car repair after an accident means a situation in which the effects of a collision are invisible. What is hidden from our eyes is of secondary importance. It often happens that parts from other cars are used during the repair, but which are just at hand. Nobody also cares about security issues, because diagnosticians often ignore this aspect during the inspection.
A lot of repairs are carried out with the help of cheap substitutes. Damaged body parts are patted and smoothed. Such a repair has nothing to do with restoring the car to its original efficiency and does not guarantee safety in the event of a collision.
The straightening of body parts and the car frame is also popular. Such a repair in any case, even if it is carried out in an ASO, weakens the key structural elements of the car.
The effects of cheap repair
The Argentine organization CESVI (equivalent to the European EuroNCAP) conducted crash tests on two Citroen C3 (check this video – click). After the first hitting the obstacle, the cars were repaired. In the first car, all parts were replaced with new ones, and the second was repaired using cheap repair methods popular in our country (straightening, patting, filling). Then the cars were again subjected to crash test. The car, professionally repaired, showed almost perfect durability – the original crumple zone was 223 millimeters, and on the second impact it increased by only 3 mm. In the repaired car “at cost”, the crumple zone increased from 217 to 295 mm. As a result of the repair, the car’s durability decreased by more than a third.
