2004 Toyota Prius: Thanks For The Shopping Cart, Jerkface

Paintless Dent Removal (PDR) and touch-up paint might make it a bit better.

Any update on the alignment, Dan?

Once there was a runaway cart towards my car... with a 6 year old girl in it (giggity?). I see two store workers chasing after it and stopping it a few feet from my car. They returned the cart and the bawling girl to the grandma who was oblivious to the whole event.

I now park further away, preferable uphill if possible. Avoid drainage grates, those are the low parts of the lot.

It's because you're driving a Prius. Some idiot must've been driving a Prius a bit too... erm, typical Prius Driver like. You know, like "I'm oblivious to the world because I want good fuel economy and nobody will get in my way, dammit!" (Clearly, you lead-footed IL drivers were not him/her.) This pissed the cart-steerer off.

So, when said pissed-off-jackhole saw a Prius, he took this opportunity to get revenge, having been burned my many-a-prius-driver in his past. He took the cart, and "accidentally" gave the cart a bit of boost toward your Prius. Hence, the lovely marks and dents.

Case Closed!

Well I know a few people who hate Priuses but they would never do anything barbaric like this. Some time ago I parked my car at the Fry's Electronics in Burbank and when I came back to my car the front bumper locked as if someone ran into my car at full speed. And guess what - those security cameras they have don't work.

"Once there was a runaway cart towards my car... with a 6 year old girl in it (giggity?). I see two store workers chasing after it and stopping it a few feet from my car. They returned the cart and the bawling girl to the grandma who was oblivious to the whole event."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQ24Mw_r0eo

Happens everywhere. It says more about where the Prius was parked and where shopping was done. Carts at large grocery franchises have long pieces of rubber or plastic strips that spread the impact over a wide area.

Whatever happened to Rubber Baby Buggy Bumpers?

1. Always park uphill (duh)
2. Size it up-- make sure you park out far enough that no car will park near you before you leave
3. If there is a shopping cart near where you have parked, bring it to the store. And when you empty YOUR cart, put it in the cart-pen.

Several years ago I had a ding-doctor remove seven or eight dings from my fenders and doors. It was the best $100 or so that I have ever spent. Subsequently, I have adhered to the 3 rules above and have not received a ding since. (knock on sheet steel)

By the way, a ding-doctor (or at least the one I was lucky to get) not only makes the body work look better-- he makes it look perfect. No one could tell that my car had had dings. And when I show people where there was a major ding in a body crease line, they just can't believe it. The ding-doctor's work is the closest thing to magic that I have ever seen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Epl4bwulwCY

Why do people leave shopping carts in handicap stalls too?! It's absolutely uncanny how inconsiderate people are. When they dump their carts in a handicap spot they're not simply saying:

"I'm NOT JUST a lazy jerk who can't walk 25 extra feet to park the cart correctly, I'm ALSO the biggest turd ever for leaving my cart in the spot of people who have trouble walking, thus blocking the disabled from using the spot too! Yay for the marriage of American laziness and selfishness rolled into one big ball of antisocial behavior. "*

Yes, leaving the cart on the blue cross-hatching is just as lazy, inconsiderate and possibly evil. People in wheel chairs can't deploy their ramps if somebody leaves a cart in the crosshatch.

This is why I like plastic cladding.

So you're going to sell the Prius?

Have people lost all sense of decency these days? How hard would it be to push the cart back to the shopping cart return area? That's the reason when I go the grocery store, I'll park at the farthest spot I can find.

People are jerks these days.

That sucks but it's nothing new. You park on the street/public spaces, some asshat will eventually dent/scratch your cars sooner or later, either that or they start stealing parts from your car, like those 00' - 05' Maxima side lights or those 02'-06' Altima driver side mirror skulls.

wait the Prius is being sold?! Since when?

And what about that RX400h?

How come there are so many more a**holes than duodenums?

"Have people lost all sense of decency these days"

That wasn't an accident, a cart under its own power won't make that much of a dent.

yet more proof that people suck.

its things like this that convince me i'm not completely insane as i'm walking across a freezing, empty parking lot in the middle of winter in order to stay away from other people.

PDR works miracles. $100 or so.

Yes, sadly way too many people these days (dare I say over half it seems?) are complete self-absorbed jerks who couldn't care less about anyone who isn't a friend or relative. If you think the lot is bad, go inside a grocery store and watch how they park their cart to perfectly block the aisle for everyone else while they select just the perfect Greek yougart flavor for themselves, completely oblivious to the fact that other human beings actually also shop there.

Oh yeah, this sort of thing, plus the fact that most people are jealous B$#@&$S, has probably swung my decision from buying an Audi A5 2.0T to a more pedestrian vehicle. I have to do it to stay out of jail, because if i get a vehicle keyed again I'm going to murder someone.

I was in the parking lot of my local supermarket when a woman just pushed her cart into the middle of the lot and I had to stop it before it hit someone's Explorer. The woman didn't even care.

Also, right after my Mom got her new Taurus, she went to the supermarket and parked far away to protect it, but when she came out there was a cart and a large dent left for her on the driver's door. She was livid.

These things just happen, no matter how careful you are.

"That wasn't an accident, a cart under its own power won't make that much of a dent."

Agreed. That cart was definitely shoved intentionally into the Prius. Probably a Prius or hybrid hater trying to make an anti-green or anti-Toyota political statement.

Unless this cart rolled down hill at say 10 mph, I also agree that it must have been intentional.

There seem to be 3 dents, including one caused by the right side of the cart-- this is shown pretty clearly in the closeup.

It also looks like the paint is not as badly chipped as it looks-- the orange I see looks like it might have come off the cart's plastic bumpers.

I hate to think it was intentional, but there was just the one handicapped parking space next to me. Gravity alone only had 10 feet to work with. Good call on that third dent. Crud.

In my college Communication Ethics class, my professor brought up the scenario of leaving your shopping carts wherever you damn well please in a parking lot. Most of the students saw absolutely no ethical problem with doing so. When the professor asked them to think about what the problem may be, one person postulated that it was because "you're making the shopping cart gopher work extra to collect them." Many in the class agreed that this must be it. At this point, I raised my hand, fuming at the thought of my meticulously maintained car getting smacked from one of these people's shopping carts.

"It's unethical because you're leaving your shopping cart where it'll either end up taking a spot away from a car or where it'll end up ramming into a car! How'd you like coming back to discover your Mercedes (it was Pepperdine after all) with Ralphs imprinted into it? How'd you like to find that ever-elusive spot only to discover it's filled with eight shopping carts? And who cares about the shopping cart gopher, he's being paid to do that!"

I got a gold star from the professor. I was also quite popular in that class.

-James Riswick

Yet another example of why you'll never hear me utter the expressions "Common Sense", "Common Decency" or "Common Courtesy".

The only dings I've ever had in a lot have been when I've parked next to the disabled zone. You'd *think* the extra space would serve as a safe refuge but no. It's the default cart return AND you're dealing with people in those blue lagoons who couldn't get out of a car without throwing the door alllll the way open if they were on fire.

I now walk all the way across the lot. It's good for me.

Before my office moved, I had to park in the lot of a strip mall with a drug store. Lots of in and out traffic all day. I tried to park in a lightly-used region of the lot, but my car collected the worst parking lot rashes that year. Fortunately, my car had a few years on it. I like to think it's less than 5% of people are disrespectful of property, but that leaves a lot of people!

I never tried a dent doctor or paintless dent remover. I'm encouraged to try!

"I got a gold star from the professor. I was also quite popular in that class."

I heard that about Pepperdine. I always wondered how they calculated their GPAs.