If you have a very minor bumper-tapping accident, don’t fool yourself into thinking that there is no damage because you can’t see any. Take a look here. We’ve taken the cover off of this bumper and here we have one type of energy absorbing material. It’s an egg crate material made out of plastic and we can see right here that it’s all deformed. Well, there was no damage on the cover on the outside, but here it can’t absorb energy again.

And that would hold true of this type. This is a styrofoam-based product, and just like the material in the helmet, hit the back of the car, it absorbs the energy, it deforms, there may be no outward signs of any problem whatsoever, yet it cannot work a second time. So even minor accidents require that you check underneath the bumpers to make sure that the energy absorbing material is intact and not damaged.

Alright, but here’s something that’s even worse. Let’s take this one off, lay it down here, and what do we see? We see here that there is nothing on this metal plate, and if we look inside the bumper there is nothing in there. In this case a body shop cheated the owner of the vehicle. They saved the money for the energy absorber, they put a new cover on it and painted it but this car would be dangerous in another accident. So following accident repairs, following an accident anything like that, make sure that you check the energy absorber in your bumper even if you can’t see a scratch on the outside.

 

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